


Platonic

by amireal



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Dating, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Loneliness, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, Snuggling, adult relationships, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 19:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1700369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amireal/pseuds/amireal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows, no matter what, it’ll be fun, there’s no real need to buy two tickets except that was the assumption of the internet check out app and if anyone asks, Phil will deny to his dying breath feeling judged by a small bit of programming. Still, he spends twice as much as he needs. He likes the idea of taking someone with him, to laugh with, to maybe share a new experience.</p><p>    Or</p><p>    Making friends is hard, especially when you have no idea what you're doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. [AdamantSteve](http://adamantsteve.tumblr.com/) and I initially started writing this together, she contributed a great deal of the words up through chapter 5 but due to real life stresses and other factors bowed out but told me that I should feel free to finish it. I have! It should be clear that the final product is completely based on mine and my beta's (Selori) work. After AdamantSteve bowed out she did not see the fic again until it was finished. I still feel she made a very large contribution and I thank her for the opportunity to write with her.
> 
> 2\. I must also thank, and so should everyone else because I have serious run away comma problems, [Selori](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Selori/pseuds/Selorim) for the super awesome beta and amazing turn around time considering the length of this fic.
> 
> 3\. I labeled it MCU only, but I feel like this takes enough from 616 that I could say it's mildly influenced by it. I'm aware of a lot of the canon there and a few of the details probably blend in.
> 
> 4\. This is completely written AND beta'd. I'll probably post 1 chapter every day or so.

When he buys the tickets, he has every intention of finding someone to take. In fact, he’s almost more enamored of the idea of taking someone out as he is with seeing the show. He’d caught them once, at the end of an op abroad. They’d been ungodly popular, energetic and hilarious, and Phil had found himself smiling at the end of a grueling op instead of exhausted. So when the advertisements started appearing in New York, Phil immediately finds the website on his phone and looks up the performance dates.

He knows, no matter what, it’ll be fun, there’s no real need to buy two tickets except that was the assumption of the internet check out app and if anyone asks, Phil will deny to his dying breath feeling judged by a small bit of programming. Still, he spends twice as much as he needs. He likes the idea of taking someone with him, to laugh with, to maybe share a new experience.

It never happens, finding a second person, and eventually it’s the morning of the performance and he’s got two tickets in his pocket. He sighs at his screen saver and wonders if maybe he should just forget the whole thing.

Why didn’t he plan this out earlier? Phil emails half a dozen people -- colleagues that he’d be hard pressed to call ‘friends’ but people that he’s friendly with nonetheless. He can’t be sure if their excuses are genuine or not, but Phil’s made plenty of similar ones in his time so he doesn’t begrudge them. A weird circus act is a hard sell, apparently.

Would it be too pathetic to just go alone? Sit amongst couples and groups of friends, an empty seat his only companion? Probably. He’s clicking through old emails to find someone - anyone - who might be free (Hill’s a bad date, Fury never Goes Out, Sitwell’s always in the bar whenever he’s got a free evening, and Phil will never understand how he does as well as he does) when the door opens.

Phil looks up, though he knows before looking who it is. “Barton.”

Clint Barton drops a crate of arrows on one end of Phil’s office couch before dropping himself on the other end. “Sir,” he says, picking up an arrow. He does this -- comes by to set up shop and restring his bow or clean his gun or, as today, go through his arrows and trim their fletching, getting debris all over the couch. Phil sighs and watches for a moment before he has an idea…

He must stare at Barton for too long, because his preternatural spy senses pick it up and Barton’s motions slow and become just slightly more deliberate. He’s not showing off, Phil thinks, just paying a bit more attention. Still, it’s hard to voice the idea out loud.

“Sir?” Barton eventually says, stopping completely, “is there a problem?”

“Yes,” he says automatically. “No,” Phil corrects himself. It’s not a problem and certainly not the type Barton is probably thinking it about.

Barton smirks a little. “That was very clear.” But he puts down the arrows in his hands and grants Phil his full attention. “What’s wrong?”

There’s a bit of a blush working its way up to Phil’s face and if he thinks too hard about it he’ll realize how absolutely dumb this is, all of it, every single thing about the situation. If he thinks too hard he’ll realize how much he wants finding a second person to be easy. “I’ve got tickets,” is what he says, “the Flying Karamazov Brothers and--”

“Oh my god, I love those guys!” Barton exclaims before Phil can finish his pathetic little explanation.

“You do?” Phil feels something like relief bloom in his chest. This is what it should be like having friends and a spare ticket. This, right here.

Barton ducks his head almost shyly. “Sometimes, when it’s really tough, I imagine what I could do if I left SHIELD.” The very notion makes Phil’s heart clench. “I like to think I could be part of an act like that. Funny, informative… smart.”

Phil stops himself before he can say something utterly embarrassing. Instead he pulls the tickets out of his pocket. “I have an extra ticket.”

Barton’s eyes go wide and bright. “Sir?”

“If you’re free,” Phil says. “Kinda left it last minute and now everyone’s busy.”

“Seriously?” Barton is staring at him like the first time Phil said he could bring his bow on a mission.

Phil looks at the tickets, ’cause Clint’s eyes are like lasers. “You’d be helping me out, honestly.”

Barton’s face goes, if possible, even more open and happy. “Yes! I mean,” he starts putting his stuff away into the boxes it came in, “when do we leave?”

When Barton meets him in front of the SHIELD offices, he’s wearing jeans and boots but his shirt is-- well it’s a button down, with a collar and cuffs and everything. Sure, the top two buttons aren’t done and his cuffs are a rolled up, but it’s still fancier than Phil has seen outside of an op for Barton, ever.

Barton catches Phil’s surprised look and a shrugs self consciously. “It’s the theater on Friday night in New York City. Even I know you dress up a little for that.”

Phil laughs gently. “You look fine,” he says as Barton fidgets under his gaze.

They walk companionably the 10 blocks to the theater, and by the time they hand their tickets off, Barton is practically vibrating with excitement and Phil can’t help but find that absolutely delightful. The only time Barton has been nearly this excitable in recent memory is when he gets to pull out the trick arrows.

Two hours later they leave the theater and Phil’s cheeks ache from smiles and laughter and Barton’s entire body screams happiness and relaxation.

“Late dinner?” Phil impulsively suggests.

“Yes,” Barton says immediately.

They eat in a tiny sushi place that’s down a narrow flight of stairs beside a garbage truck. Phil’s sure they’re going to die of food poisoning -- the menus are sticky, and he’s sure he saw a dead rat outside -- but it turns out to be some of the best Japanese food he’s ever eaten. Phil’s more impressed than he can put into words, not only with the restaurant itself, but with the fact that a guy he didn’t think would even like sushi has a favorite sushi place.

Phil imagines for a moment how it would be if this were the date he’d half imagined when he’d bought the tickets weeks ago. He’d have brought whoever it was to somewhere much fancier, probably be talking with a sommelier about wine choices and stressing over what moves he should and shouldn’t employ later on, if, of course, his date is amenable to the idea.

“What?” Clint says, snapping Phil out of his daydream. He realizes he was staring at Clint’s hands where he’s rolling one of his rings around between his fingers.

Phil shakes his head. “Nothing. Just, it’s been a while since I went out just to go out, you know? I barely make time for doing things outside of work as it is. It’s nice to go out without any kind of agenda.”

“Right?” Clint says, popping an tony gyoza into his mouth and grinning. “If this were a date there’s no way I’d have ordered all this garlic-y stuff.”

Phil chuckles. Fair enough. He also feels free to try the recommended sake, which is the smoothest alcohol he’s had in a while. On a date he’d feel obligated to stay in control, sipping wine and knowing exactly how much he can have without bending too far. Sake is a different story, but it feels good to indulge. “I wish I could do this more often.” _In sake veritas_ , he thinks. He’s not used to letting any of that out into the light of day.

“Why can’t you?” Clint asks, and it’s definitely Clint now, though Phil promises himself to call him Barton next time they run into one another at work.

Phil sighs and slumps a little, the first whiff of sadness working its way into the evening. “Look at what happened tonight? I almost didn’t go at all.”

“You weren’t going to go alone?” Clint asks, his face a mask of puzzlement. “But you enjoyed it, right? I heard you laugh almost as much as me.”

Phil looks down at his plate, the remnants of a delicious meal all that is left, and he knows, viscerally, it’s not the content of the evening, but the company. “I get tired of doing things alone,” Phil says quietly. “It becomes…” he trails off. “I just get tired of doing things alone.”

“But you do everything alone!” Clint says, and then clearly regrets it. “I mean -- uh. Just that you. I thought you liked being on your own?”

Phil laughs, ruefully at first but it turns into bright, true laughter as the absurdity of it hits him. Yes, he supposes, he probably does seem to be something of a loner. Clint looks confused at first, but he’s smiling by the time Phil stops laughing.

“Well, you have to keep people on their toes,” Clint says. “The aloof Agent Coulson. Y’know, people won’t even believe you went out tonight, and certainly not with me.”

Phil nods. “That’s right.” He sees Clint’s expression change, and hastens to add, “I don’t mean- you don’t have to keep this a secret or anything.”

“I had fun tonight,” Clint says. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“I had fun too,” Phil admits easily, “and the dinner suggestion is something I never would have tried on my own.”

“That’s because you’re a snob,” Clint says with the honesty that a full stomach and good alcohol can lend a person and then he looks absolutely stricken.

Phil chuckles. “A little, but probably not as much as you think.”

Clint recovers quickly at that and smiles back. “Well you’re out with me, aren’t you?”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Clint,” he says and then realizes they never formalized the idea of being casual, which is absurd and Phil realizes that he’s just slightly tipsy. “You shouldn’t put yourself down like that.” He doesn’t mean to pull out that flavor of honesty, but it seems to be that sort of evening. A quiet bubble of companionship, the kind that leads to strange confessions and life long secrets. With a suddenness that shocks him, Phil realizes he wants this bubble again. He thinks about his friends, the people he’s called friends for years, decades, but they’ve never done this. Quiet companionship.

“I don’t go out a lot either,” Clint says, a wistful look on his face. He’s listing a little to the left.

“Why?” Phil asks.

Clint shrugs. “I forget?” He sips what’s left of his water. “I spent a long time not having the option and I guess-- I forget I can now.”

They agree to ‘do something like this again’ when they part ways, but Phil doesn’t let himself get his hopes up. By the time he’s home, he’s convinced that Clint was just humoring him for the most part, taking pity on the sad, lonely figure Phil probably cuts around the offices of SHIELD. He’s never really tried to foster the aloof agent schtick, it’s just something that came naturally, but he can’t deny he’s used it to his advantage.

He brushes his teeth, puts on his pajamas, and slips between cold, lonely sheets.

The next day, Phil has a headache and finds himself fumbling with the coffee machine more than usual. The warmth and happiness he felt last night has morphed into something bitter and lonely by his lingering hangover and the cold light of day -- of course Clint doesn’t want to be his friend, Clint doesn’t want anything to do with him. And how pathetic anyway: a nearing middle-aged man trying to make friends. With a subordinate no less! Okay, Clint is quickly moving into a place while he’s still subordinate to Phil, it’s more parallel in the command structure than straight up and down, but still. Clint only jumped at the chance when he found out what the show was. It wouldn’t have occurred to him otherwise, Phil is pretty sure of that. Getting along well on missions is not the same thing as being friends or even wanting to be friends.

He’s glaring into his black, burnt coffee, the Times crossword forgotten on the kitchen table next to him, when his phone chimes from the bedroom.

It’s a text from Clint.

_Hope your hangover isn’t too bad! Thanks for the show last night :)_

For a long moment, he stares at it, incomprehension swamping his senses.

_Headache. Forgot to hydrate._

He hits send and immediately thinks he should have said something about enjoying the evening.

_I’m glad we went._

He sends before he can think better of it. Immediately it feels like he’s exposed his belly to the wild. He concentrates on getting coffee and water into his stomach and pondering the rest of his day. When the phone buzzes again only minutes later, it actually startles him.

_Agent Coulson less than ready for absolutely everything? Your secret is safe with me!_

As Phil is still smiling at the tease, another message pops up, obviously in answer to his second text.

_Me too. There’s a thing I saw on the way home, I thought maybe you’d like to join me next month? It looks like fun._

Phil’s eyebrows go up in surprise. It seems a genuine enough offer, but part of him can’t help but wonder if its just a tit for tat. Still, he replies.

_A thing?_

_A thing. Medieval weaponry exhibition at the museum next month. There’s a dress code though. I hope you have a suit you can wear._

_I think I can find one somewhere._

The month that follows is a slow one, filled with all the paperwork that gets routinely shunted out of the way when more pressing world-alert situations take precedence. It’s the boring sort of work Phil only enjoys for the fact that doing it moves stuff off his desk, the physical and the metaphorical and at the end of the day he can see an actual difference. It’s tedious and the days drag to the point that Phil _almost_ starts wishing for some sort of peril to liven things up. As it is, even his couch gets covered in stacks of file boxes.

As a result, there’s no room for Clint to come by and scatter things about him like a cat shedding hair, and Phil feels lonelier than ever. This museum thing has been weighing on his mind, at first a thing of excitement -- he’s had a suit hanging on the hook inside his closet since that hungover Saturday -- but recently, after weeks of not hearing anything new from Clint, as a thing of disappointment. Clint had just been being polite, that was all.

 _Meet you on the East steps at 8?_ says Phil’s phone one evening, just as he’s about to tuck into a reheated leftovers in front of a DVR binge.

He blinks in shock before he closes his eyes in consternation. He’s not this unsure of himself anywhere else. It’s getting ridiculous. Still, he shoves the damn food into the fridge (it might be salvageable later) and moves to change. He detours to the bathroom to freshen up and scrape off the bit of shadow that’s grown in since the morning and to top off with a bit of aftershave.

At his closet, he suffers a moment of hesitation and then swaps his shirt out for something slightly fancier. The new shirt is almost exactly the same as the old one, only a slightly better cut and fabric, but it also requires cuff links. It’s something he so rarely wears outside of a cover and then his cuff links usually serve some sort of a dual purpose. His own have sat in their box, untouched, for years. He slides them into their proper holes, nothing fancy, just his initials in antique gold which matches his good watch that he pulls out at the same time.

He’s done just as the taxi he ordered arrives; something about the evening makes him not want to start it with a battle of the weekend subway lines. Clint is waiting for him at the end of his ride, looking perfectly pressed and mildly uncomfortable, but his face lights up as soon as his eyes land on Phil. It’s-- it’s a good feeling.

In Clint’s hand is a silver-edged, embossed invitation. He wasn’t kidding -- this is really an opening, practically a private affair. Except Phil spies the charity signs and realizes that Clint possibly laid down a pretty penny to come, let alone invite him.

“I wasn’t gonna go,” Clint said looking embarrassed, “but then I thought about what you said and I thought maybe I should try to go out more.”

“I’m tempted to send a picture of you to the Wardrobe department to prove that it is possible to get you in a suit without a fight, but I won’t.”

“You’d better not,” Clint replies. “I’ve got your invitation.”

They start off up the steps, and Phil almost feels underdressed in comparison to the New York glitterati in all their finery. Clint seems to know the security people, who usher him in without even looking at his invitation, and Phil feels a strange sense of pride and belonging. ‘I’m with him,’ he thinks, smugly, even though no one’s really looking their way.

Phil’s worked undercover at events like these, but this is the first time he’s been a guest at one. He almost misses the comm unit in his ear, and Clint seems to feel much the same, casing the room for exits by habit.

Clint seems kind of uncomfortable, and the tickets must have been expensive, so Phil wonders why he even chose to come. They could easily have swung by on a different day, checked out the exhibit without glasses of champagne and hors d’oeuvres in hand.

“Were these tickets really expensive?” Phil asks quietly. “We can probably expense them, you know.”

Clint swigs some champagne and grins. “Nah, I got ’em for free. C’mon, I wanna show you something.”

There are smaller rooms off of the larger hall, a series of interconnected galleries that appear to go through different eras of weaponry. There’s a whole wall of flint arrowheads, all pointing in the same direction, a series of replica arrows in a case, a display of types of fletching and comparisons to modern day fiberglass arrows. A tall, arch-looking woman stalks out of the room as they enter it, leaving them alone, and Phil watches Clint look over the display.

“Look,” he says, beckoning Phil closer and pointing at one of the arrowheads on the wall. It’s a particularly small one, and Phil wonders how Clint could have seen it so quickly. “Look how tiny that is,” he marvels. “Somebody chipped that out of rock thousands of years ago.”

“This whole wall is amazing,” Phil says, noting how the arrowheads change as they go across the wall -- some of them so eroded that they don’t really look like anything, others look as sharp as razors.

Clint is quiet, and when Phil looks over, he realizes Clint’s smiling bashfully. “Um, I sorta. Made it.”

Phil finds himself waiting for a punchline before he realizes how cruel that is, so he lets his eyes go big in genuine surprise and admiration. “That’s amazing,” he says and he truly means it. It is absolutely amazing and he can see the care used through the exhibit. “How’d you get involved?”

So Clint waves him over to a display. It has examples from every corner of the world, from similar time periods, perched next to one another in a very interesting compare and contrast display. “I find things,” Clint says, “stuck in the places you put me for days on end. Snipers find ways to occupy their minds,” he shrugs, hands shoved in his pockets. “The first one was a fluke.” He points at a beautiful arrow in the center, carved out of something unusual but still deadly looking. “With my eyes, that was easy to spot in the middle of the desert.”

“It was so pretty,” Clint says quietly, “but deadly.” They both smile, at the same thought, Phil is sure of it, “and I was curious. So I started reading.”

Clint moves on and points out a few others. “The next few were more or less on purpose, but still pretty haphazard. Still, I learned to document it right, figured if I was going to collect ancient things, there should be proof, you know?” He points to a photograph next to it, complete with fancy measuring tool pictured inside it. “I talked to spec ops about it. They said digital images cost them nothing and as long as it didn’t reveal anything classified, it was fine. There was some worry about tracking our missions through them, but these kinds of things don’t get found every place I’m sent, so they okayed it.”

“Eventually,” Clint goes on, “I stopped getting anything at all from the books, so I looked up some of the authors and it sounds way more stalky than it was, I swear. I just sent an email or two with some images and I got a reply.”

“That’s amazing,” Phil says again, because it is, and the way Clint, showman of the ages, is talking about it, seems like maybe he doesn’t quite realize just how impressive this is.

Clint shrugs, hands in his pockets again. “It’s just stuff I picked up, really.”

“Thank you for inviting me,” Phil says, genuinely touched. “You should’ve brought the whole team.” He’s referring to strike team delta, mostly. “They’d love to see this stuff, Clint.”

Clint frowns for a fleeting moment before looking nonchalant again. “Nah, s’boring unless you like this kinda thing.”

“I don’t think it’s boring.”

Clint runs a finger along the edge of a glass case and smirks. “You like boring things though,” he says, heading off into the next room.

Phil shakes his head to himself and follows along. Clint shows a remarkable amount of knowledge for the entire exhibit, and it becomes glaringly obvious that he’s done more than put together that one room.

“Did you have fun?” Phil asks when Clint takes a break talking about what an amazing find a pair of bronze short swords are.

Clint’s face goes soft and a little pink. “I think I did.”

“I’m glad,” Phil said, absolutely genuine in his happiness for Clint.

Clint absently traces the nearest plaque. “Dr. Jennings offered me college credit for my work.” He bites his lip. “I didn’t tell her I haven’t even gotten my GED.”

“Why not?” Phil asks before he realizes exactly how obnoxious the question is. “I mean, Clint, I doubt you’d even have to study that much,” he goes on carefully, because Clint’s open face is quickly closing down, “I’m 100% sure you know all of the information, you’d just have to learn how the test wants it presented.”

Clint sort of shrugs and sighs at the same time, and Phil knows that he’s clumsily let the moment slip out of his hands. “You want another?” Clint asks, gesturing to Phil’s empty glass.

“Sure,” Phil says, watching Clint as he goes in search of fresh drinks. While Clint is occupied he makes a note on his phone to look up what’s involved in the GED process. Phil’s not sure how he’ll be able to raise the topic without Clint completely shutting down or attempting to explain why it’s a bad idea, but he’s going to try. Clint comes back with a tray of tiny burgers and two glasses of champagne, holding them like he’s one of the waitstaff.

“Figured you might be hungry,” he explains. “You wanna go on the balcony?”

Apparently, during fancy shindigs like these, and if you’re with someone who has made friends with security (and apparently, curates exhibits in their spare time) you’re granted access all areas. Clint’s clearly very familiar with the place, taking them up to a balcony that looks over the central hall of the museum. It’s dusty up here, so they lean against the railing, unnoticed by the crowd as they eat their dainty burgers one by one. They’re not as filling as the quart of mushu at home might have been, but Phil feels more satisfied than he has in weeks. Since the theater, in fact.

“Feels weird not to be on comms,” Clint says, rolling his glass in his hands high above the crowd below.

Phil chuckles, sipping lightly. “That’s what I thought when I first got here.” He points at a random patron below them. “Want to tail someone, just for fun?”

Clint joins him, to get his eye line and mock studies the crowd. “She’s boring,” he says and then points to a couple across the way. “Now them, they’d at least be interesting.”

“Oh?”

“Mmhmm,” Clint says, smile finally coming back to his eyes. “Look at her jewelry and then his suit.” He waits for Phil’s nod. “One of these things isn’t like the other.”

Phil sees it now that it’s pointed out, one of them is putting on airs, it’s the kind of detail that’s useful on the type of mission these places tend to attract. “What about them?” Phil points to another couple, already formulating his own theories and they spend the next half hour or so, people watching in the way only spies can. They make a second run through the exhibits, Clint tossing off an interesting fact here or there and Phil resolves to find some way to get Clint past the GED and take the college credit he so obviously deserves.

The evening is winding down and Phil doesn’t feel the least bit tired. They’ve found themselves another quiet corner and their idle chit-chat doesn’t even begin to approach boring, which is a new feeling for Phil.

“Hey,” Clint eventually says during a natural lull in the conversation, “you should pick the next one.”

Phil blinks, startled. “Next one?” he says and he can see Clint studiously not looking at him and overly casual.

“I like knowing there’s someone to be awkward in public with me,” Clint shrugs.

Phil nods and then pauses. “Just one thing?”

“Yeah?”

“You saw a thing?” Phil asks knowingly, recalling Clint’s original invitation, implying this was an idea Clint picked up off the street.

Clint ducks his head and shrugs his shoulders. “There was an advertisement!”

“An advertisement?” Phil asks.

Clint bites his lip and makes a terrible attempt at looking innocent, “That reminded me I had the invitation?”

Phil shakes his head, smiling. Only Clint.


	2. Chapter 2

The next few weeks, Phil is lifted by the thought that he and Clint have Plans, even if he isn’t sure what those plans are yet. It’s been so long since Phil’s had the opportunity or the reason to make Plans that Phil kind of gets over excited. He has a half-dozen tabs open on his computer, of various things that seem far too elaborate and thought out. Falconry and go carting and those ‘I didn’t know what to get you so I got you this’ gift voucher event day things.

With a week to go and nothing appropriate presenting itself, Phil closes all the tabs and tells himself to stop over-thinking it. He’s reminded of being a kid, sitting by the window waiting for his cousins to come by. Then he gets a text.

_I know I said you could pick, but I found a thing I think you would like. Saturday?_

A gust of relief runs through Phil’s entire body. The tension of indecision is a strange one for him and it’s been giving him fits for weeks.

_No tickets bought, no harm, no foul. Saturday’s fine._

His relief is so stark that he manages to get absorbed in his paperwork for the first time in days. He doesn’t see Clint’s reply for nearly a half hour.

_Awesome. Hey, can we use your car? The Thing is out in Suffolk and I don’t mind you on my bike, but I think you might._

Suffolk? Huh. Phil resists Google and vows to be surprised. He sends Clint a note that says using his car is fine.

On the morning of, he’s dressed in sneakers, comfortable jeans, and a t-shirt under his casual jacket, just as Clint instructed, when Clint pops up at his door, ready to go. Clint slides into Phil’s Subaru like it’s not one of the most intimate things in the world outside of the bedroom to change a car owner’s driving seat set up, and gets them on the road quickly.

The drive is easy at that time of day on a weekend and after 45 minutes of Clint looking smug and excited, they pull into a parking lot of what looks like a large warehouse. The signage gives it away.

“Laser tag?” Phil asks incredulously.

Clint shrugs. “I’ve always wanted to try it! Come on! It’s pro week, which means military, cop, or alphabet soup ID required to get in.”

Well, that’s a bit better at least.

Inside, Phil eyes the equipment suspiciously. It’s a choice between lurid neon green or neon purple, and Phil can’t help but imagine all the teenagers who’ve been in and out of here over the years, all those groups of friends… He rolls his eyes at himself -- his youth was long ago; hardly time to be dwelling on it now.

“What do you think?” Clint asks from behind him. Phil turns as Clint strikes a pose, already suited up with his laser gun in hand.

“Shoulda known you’d pick purple.”

“Obviously. C’mon, you’re not having second thoughts are you?”

Phil grabs the closest vest and throws it on. “Nope,” he says, and even though this is all a game, he still feels the slight buzz of Mission Mode settling into him, all his senses slightly heightened.

A bored-looking teenager explains the ins and outs of their equipment and the game itself before they’re ushered into a dark, artificially smoky room with loud pop music playing over hidden speakers. It could be an empty, maze-like disco, Phil thinks to himself. Apparently, there are two more team mates somewhere inside, and two more opposing teams, four players on each, but there’s no sign of anyone.

“So, what’s the plan, boss?” Clint asks, crouching down to peep over the edge of a wall. They’re in a ‘safe zone’, but Phil can feel eyes on them. He stays standing and raises an eyebrow.

“This was your idea. Shouldn’t you take lead?”

Clint’s eyes light up in glee.

They, to quote Clint, kick ass. So much so that they’re invited to a league, filled mostly by off-duty military personnel. They say they’ll think about it and while it sounds appealing and a decent way to make friends who would probably understand his schedule and lifestyle, he finds he’d rather stick with Clint, and he worries if they take up the offer it’ll take the place of their day of friendship or whatever you might want to call it.

“I think maybe this is how we should always do it,” Clint says over soda and overly-fried snack foods.

Phil makes a questioning noise, too busy shoveling terrible food into his own mouth. Laser tag apparently uses up a lot of calories.

“Pick ideas to try off the street,” Clint says. “I mean, like advertisements on the subway, those fliers in the tiny stores. That kind of thing.”

It sounds risky, in the most pleasant of ways, and it eliminates the worst part of the whole thing -- the agonizing hours of indecision over virtual shopping baskets. “And if nothing catches our eyes we can always hit midtown and see what shows or something have the cheap tickets still available.”

Phil swallows his mouthful of fries before replying, because even in this place surrounded by posters for laser tag and off duty military, he has some manners. Clint watches him as he dabs at his mouth with a napkin, waiting for Phil’s response.

“Ok,” Phil says eventually. It feels a little scary but in the good sort of way, an exhilarating way, and in any case, Phil’s discovering he pretty much enjoys doing anything with Clint. He has a genuine enjoyment of things, even when he’s being snarky. It’s made Phil realize that he’s all too often far too cynical about things himself most of the time.

“Ok?”

Phil nods, balling up the napkin and placing it over the sad remains of his cheeseburger. He can already feel the heartburn that will keep him awake later that night. “But it’s my turn for sure next time.”

Clint chuckles. “Are you gonna get me back for this place? Take me to the opera or something?”

“If there’s an ad for the opera in the back of a magazine, then yes.”

Clint narrows his eyes playfully. “I may have to rethink this whole idea.”

It’s a joke, Phil knows it -- over time he’s come to know all of Clint’s joking voices -- but still it makes him start in fear. Clint’s face doesn’t change, so Phil must have kept it deep inside along with all of his other suddenly teaming insecurities. “Well you better hope there’s a lot of advertisements in my eye line this month.”

Phil hits jackpot pretty early, now that he’s looking for it. There’s a flier tucked under his windshield wiper. It’s for a flea market that springs up when the weather gets warm. Phil has driven past it a couple dozen times since he’s moved to his current place and they always have a big push when the traveling carnival comes into town and sets up in the lot next to it.

Usually the most attention Phil pays it is the increased traffic, foot and car, which usually prompts him to choose a different route home. This time he carefully folds the paper into quarters and slips it into his pocket. Feeling good all around and fairly confident about his decisions and about Clint in general, he sends Clint a carefully worded email about what he’s unearthed about sitting for the GED. All of the material Phil gathers assumes Clint would prefer independent study to any of programs SHIELD might offer. Phil specifically includes the test schedule run out of the local high schools to highlight this fact.

Clint doesn’t reply, but every so often Phil spies a well worn paperback and mechanical pencil half hidden under or in a pile of Clint’s stuff. It’s a tips and practice manual. A little while later, less time than Phil thought Clint would take out of nerves, Clint asks if they can go someplace fancy next time while sliding the printout of his scores over Phil’s desk. Clint wears a tie and Phil springs for the good champagne and there are pictures taken and then Phil hands Clint a letter from Dr. Jennings offering him a spot in the next freshman class at NYU.

“I can’t—,” Clint looks torn as he tries to say something.

“She knows you have a day job,” Phil assures him. “There are a couple of programs that make allowances. Also we’re both pretty sure you’ll be able to test out or provide proof of real world experience for a lot of the prerequisites.” Clint’s face remains tilted down and shadowed and Phil worries he took too many liberties, but he wants Clint to know for sure it is an option.

“Is it,” Clint finally says, not looking up, “is it because we’re friends? You want me to— do you— are you ashamed—”

That’s about as far as Phil can let Clint get and he’s horrified that it even occurs to him. “No,” Phil says firmly, emphatically. “No. Never that.”

Clint looks up, and his eyes are shining in the low light of the restaurant. “Then why?”

Phil’s heart aches in that moment and there are things he wants to do to reassure Clint, to explain that he doesn’t need to do anything for Phil’s friendship other than be there. “Because,” Phil says slowly, “you seem to think _you_ don’t deserve it, or aren’t capable, and you are, you’re more than worthy and capable of this. If you want it, you should have it.”

Clint stares at him and then very slowly reaches out for the folded piece of paper that had fluttered out of his hands and onto the table when Clint had realized what it was. “I’ve never thought—,” he stops and swallows a sip of champagne, “I put the idea away a long time ago I guess I never— I forgot I could.”

Phil smiles gently and swallows every impulse inside of him to physically reach out. “If you ever need any help,” Phil says, more than eager to do the research or to strong arm the Deans, whatever is needed, “you don’t even have to ask.”

Clint bites his lip and slowly folds the letter back along its grooves and stuffs it carefully into his jacket pocket. “Okay,” Clint says softly, “thanks.”

Phil deliberately changes the subject after that, but Clint remains looking slightly befuddled for the rest of the night. The way his fingers keep reaching back to touch the edges of the pocket where the letter resides makes it all worth while in the end.

Twelve months after their tentative agreement is struck, Clint is in the beginnings of his second ‘semester’. Even though he only carries about two classes at a time and can file for extensions as needed, Phil has only signed off on two. Clint’s progress is pretty fast considering his lifestyle, but every time Phil catches Clint staring intently at a textbook there’s a determination in Clint’s face and body that Phil has rarely seen from Clint. It makes him feel proud and happy and a little bit hopeful all at once. 

They’ve made multiple visits to the flea market which has left Phil with a variety of Cap memorabilia, of which the provenance is questionable (to say the least), and as far as he can tell, furnished half of Clint’s place. They’ve also been to watch a roller derby, a monster truck rally, been to a wine tasting (a disaster or a resounding success, depending on which way you look at it), and an assortment of New York’s smallest, most niche museums.

The vague sense of fear Phil used to feel about trying new things has been replaced by a quiet excitement and knowledge that as long as Clint’s there, he’ll have a good time. When something is boring, Clint livens it up with hushed observations that have Phil fighting off the giggles. When something is awe-inspiring or touching, Clint remains quiet and reflective, and for a while, Phil thought that he was bored at times like those, fought to be entertaining as best he could, until he realized it was just Clint’s way.

They’re friends, Phil realizes, when he finds himself smiling at the same time as writing ‘slam poetry open mic’ in his calendar.

Shockingly, it takes them something like a year for the outside world to interfere with their little arrangement. It’s not that they haven’t occasionally rescheduled, but they’ve never needed to cancel outright until the day Clint lands in medical less than 24 hours before any of their plans. Clint is released fairly quickly, but he needs rest, not a night on the town, and Phil finds his chest getting absurdly tight when Clint makes those pained noises as he shifts around.

“Let’s stay in,” Phil says abruptly while Clint fights with his shirt.

When Clint’s mussed hair and bruised face pop through the neck hole, he looks about as delighted as one could look while their eyes are blackened and their cheek is fractured. “Rent a movie?” His words are slightly slurred from swelling and pain killers.

“I’ve got the super fancy cable package,” Phil says, reaching out to take Clint’s bag. “No video store needed.”

Clint pauses before jumping off the bed, or probably in this case, slithering gently. “I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to make it home after.”

“Stay at my place,” Phil says before he can think it through. “You need someone nearby for a few days anyway.”

Seeing his apartment through the fresh eyes of a new guest, Phil is suddenly embarrassed by the indexed and alphabetized and sorted file drawer of takeout menus that takes the place of a regular side table in his living room, and the assortment of ties hung over the back of the closet door in the hallway. Clint’s eyes widen (as much as they can, swollen as they are) as he enters, and Phil wonders what Clint had expected. But he doesn’t comment on the signs of a less than perfect apartment or the sad stack of recyclable takeout detritus just visible in the kitchen but makes a beeline for the shelf on the same wall as the TV.

“Asian Cap!” he cries, picking up the rather unusual looking, poorly made, plastic knock-off Cap toy Clint had found in the bottom of a bin full of action figures in the flea market a couple of months ago. All the colors are slightly off, the blue is too dark, the skin a strange yellow, and the print on the face had the pair of them laughing for a good five minutes before Phil handed over the 25 cents it cost. He lives on the shelf along with the rest of Phil’s fleamarket Cap finds, all of his ‘good’ collection on the opposite wall.

“Sit down,” Phil says, hustling Clint over to the couch where he’d already piled extra pillows and blankets the night before when the idea first occurred to him. He’s planning on taking the couch so Clint can sleep in an actual bed, but he might as well be comfortable while he’s here.

Clint gives him the evil eye as he hobbles over. “Did you make me a nest?”

Phil chuckles. That joke has been going around SHIELD nearly as long as Clint’s been an active agent. “That’s for me, for tonight. The bed is a king, but I thought you’d appreciate no one jostling you when you least expect it.”

Clint pauses, looking shocked. “I’m putting you on the couch? No, I can’t—”

“Clint,” Phil says flatly, “you have to brace yourself to change shirts. You’re taking the bed.”

Clint mutters something that could be an agreement or could be absolutely gibberish, either way he finishes finding his seat and getting his boots off. They spend a few minutes finding the right places to put the pillows so that Clint is braced in a comfortable position without anything pushing on his injuries. Clint takes out a book with hard covers and a university bookstore buyback stamp and sets it aside to pick up later. They decide on a movie shockingly fast, especially after Phil makes it clear he’s willing to pay the blackmail pricing for movies still in theaters.

Twenty or thirty minutes in, something soft and ticklish touches his shoulder. When he turns, he sees it’s Clint’s head, just about slumped close enough to touch Phil’s shoulder; his hair is already there. Clint is dead asleep, so deep the only thing that truly moves is his stomach. Phil presses on the back of the couch, just enough to create a gap for gravity to work and Clint slides down the last bit of space until he’s comfortably leaning against Phil’s shoulder.

Phil stays there, being very careful not to move too much. His arm falls asleep, but he doesn’t mind — Clint needs his sleep and that’s all that’s important right now.

The doorbell rings and they both jump awake — Phil having drifted into a nap himself. “Shh,” he says, half to Clint and half to the door. “Lie down, go back to sleep.”

Clint blinks sleepily at him, but when Phil returns with their pizza, he’s sitting back up, the book is on the floor, and he’s clearing a space on the coffee table, wincing at the movement.

“Stop that,” Phil says, putting the food down before fetching plates and napkins from the kitchen. He almost grabs a couple of beers from the fridge, but thinks better of it when he remembers the painkillers Clint’s on. He pours them both glasses of water instead.

“You can go to bed right now if you’re tired. I don’t mind,” he says once he’s settled back on the couch beside Clint.

“No way, I’m starving.” Clint leans forward and winces again, until Phil gently tugs him back.

“Let me,” Phil says, brimming with affection. He serves Clint up two slices which he inhales, even with the bruised ribs and face, before he lets Phil take the plate from his sleepy hands. When Phil finds his comfortable spot again, Clint tries to find his, only he wiggles and twitches every couple of seconds.

“I know I found a comfortable position before,” he complains.

“Ah,” Phil says, feeling beyond awkward, “hold on.” He pushes some pillows back to where they started, takes another and shoves it between them, and then he puts a gentle hand on Clint’s shoulder and pushes. “You were leaning this way.”

“Oh,” Clint says quietly. “I thought that was a medication-fueled dream.”

Clint settles in at Phil’s side, and Phil doesn’t put his arm around him right away, but when he finds there’s not really anywhere else to put it, he gently rests it against Clint’s shoulder. “This okay?” he asks.

Clint hums sleepily and he doesn’t nuzzle Phil’s shoulder but he does kind of nod against it, and it makes Phil feel satisfied in some deep, undefinable way. All his agents are present and correct and under proper medical supervision. Or as good as. “S’good.”

They watch whatever it is on TV until Clint’s snoring lightly, a safe, solid mass beside Phil. It’s all so calm and restful that Phil can feel sleep tugging at him, too, and nods off a couple of times before forcing himself to get up.

As soon as he makes an attempt to stand, a hand shoots out to grab his wrist, and it’s not often that Phil gets to witness Clint’s considerable strength so personally, but he’s certainly not moving until Clint decides to let him.

“Stay here,” Clint whines, and it is most definitely a whine. Phil huffs out a laugh and settles back down.

“I’m falling asleep,” he says.

Clint just hums and not-nuzzles into Phil’s shoulder again. “Comfy,” he says, voice slurred from exhaustion. Phil knows he ought to get up, get Clint to bed, but this… this is nice.

Phil is pretty sure if they stay like this they’ll both regret it in the morning the first time they try to move. He thinks about hooking a foot around the nearby ottoman, but that won’t help their necks and backs and Clint’s ribs are going to plot murder if he doesn’t get horizontal. Phil grabs a nearby pillow that Clint isn’t using to put under his head and then tilts slowly to the side until his head and pillow are braced on the arm of the sofa. As he moves, Clint moves with him, like a very determined cat.

Eventually Clint shifts enough to his side to allow Phil’s legs to swing up and join his. It takes a little while, but slowly Clint stops shifting painfully and settles down into a comfortable position, coincidentally, that position is draped across Phil’s chest and legs.

Phil wakes up slowly some time later, realizing as he blinks his eyes and focuses them on the light filtering in through the blinds that it’s actually quite a lot of time later. There’s a solid, warm weight on top of him, and he tries not to move too much when he looks down his body to see Clint, sound asleep with his mouth slightly open, looking as peaceful as someone can with bruises all over their face.

He’ll probably ache when he does get up — they both will — but Phil realizes that he hasn’t felt this well rested for a long time. So long, in fact, that he can’t actually remember the last time he did feel like he’d had a decent night’s sleep.

Clint shifts in his sleep a little, face pressing against Phil’s breast bone, and Phil smiles; being Clint’s pillow for the night hadn’t been on the agenda when he’d cajoled Clint into coming here, but he can’t say he minds it one bit. In fact, there’s something calming just about him being here — at least in Phil’s apartment, Clint can’t get any more horrible bruises or broken bones.

Clint moves again, stirring like he’s starting to wake up, and that’s when Phil feels something nudging against his leg.

After coming to some conclusions he’s not sure he wants to think about too hard, Phil figures it’s just Clint’s phone in his pocket, or a gun — Natasha’s always carrying random firearms about with her, and Clint’s probably the same. But then he moves again and Phil’s not so sure.

When Clint moves a fourth time, Phil realizes that he’s uh, carrying a gun of his own.

Phil has a brief moment of absurdity, when he thinks that everything they have, they’ve been building, he and Clint, over the last year or so would round out perfectly with sex. Though, that’d be a relationship, not a friendship, and relationships have a bad habit of ending where friendships don’t, mostly. Also, he’s not into guys — Clint shifts against him, an unconscious stretch and roll of hips — okay, maybe mostly not into guys. Hasn’t been for a long while at least.

Still, it’s not something he wants to go tinkering with. In all likelihood he, they, are both just enormously touch starved. His own morning wood is mostly an afterthought, something like a mildly pleasant consequence of getting a good night’s sleep.

“Mrrphil?” Clint’s scratchy voice wanders up to Phil’s ears.

Phil resolves to simply ignore it for now. Besides, Clint will probably spend a while just to the left of sober for a few days with his pain meds. “How’re you feeling?”

Clint moves, twitches really, a muscle group at a time. His hips jerk just as erratically as the rest of him, only they stay backed away instead of pressed, hot, against Phil’s pants.

“Ow,” Clint groans.

“I’ll get you some breakfast so you can take your next—”

“No,” Clint interrupts him and there’s a creeping note of panic in his voice. “Fuck, I mean, I think I tightened up. I don’t have the leverage to sit up on my own.”

“Okay,” Phil says, lifting up one arm and then awkwardly patting Clint on the shoulder. “I’m gonna get up, alright? You stay where you are. I’ll be right back.”

Clint makes a small noise of, what? Pain, probably, but it sounds light it’s tinged with… disappointment? No, Phil shakes his head at himself as he carefully extricates himself from underneath Clint. That is a path they are not going down. That he’s not going down.

“Shit,” Clint hisses as he’s unavoidably jostled by Phil’s movements. Phil grabs a couple of cushions and tries to replace his own bulk with them, and by the time he’s in the bathroom (with a very full bladder), his morning wood has just about disappeared. That’s better, he thinks, splashing his face and looking at himself in the mirror. He really does not need his libido getting involved and ruining things.

When he exits the bathroom, Phil has his Agent face on, and what’s more, he has a mission to focus on: fix his sniper.

“I’m gonna get you a heating pad,” he says on the way to the bedroom. He roots around in his bedside cabinet looking for some icy/hot or something and coming up with some warming lube, which he actually considers for a second before tossing it back in the drawer like it burns.

There’s a quiet thud and then some grunting and Phil has a sudden vision of Clint forcing himself to get up and tearing muscles and ligaments and fracturing bones in his neverending quest to do stuff for himself. “I’m okay,” Clint calls from the other room.

Phil closes his eyes in frustration. “I’ll be right out, stop trying to hurt yourself--”

He turns and Clint’s leaning against the doorjamb. For the briefest of moments, Phil’s brain provides him with a slew of pornographic possibilities, and what the hell? He’s not… Clint isn’t even the kind of guy Phil’s ever been into like that. Phil hasn’t had a crush on a guy for years. But then Clint pushes himself away from the jamb and Phil realizes that he’s not just standing there trying to be all vaguely disreputable and sexy and ‘I heard you needed your pipes cleaned’, he’s leaning because he’s in pain.

“Oh, for God’s sake Clint,” Phil grumps, standing with his heating pads in hand. “Lie back down, and let’s do this in a way that won’t permanently injure you?”

“I have to use the bathroom,” Clint says sulkily, but there’s still a small smile.

Phil, feeling just a bit tetchy, actually raises an eyebrow and says, “Do you think you can actually reach it or are you just going to close your eyes and aim?”

Clint snorts, gives him an affectionate middle finger, and shoves off the frame to stagger down the hall.

Phil takes the time to plug in the electric pad and shove the two microwave pads in to warm for two minutes. He grabs easy breakfast fixings and starts the coffee before setting it all out on the coffee table. By the time Clint staggers back, looking only marginally more awake, Phil is ready for him. It takes shockingly little prodding to get Clint to sit still enough to place the pads, but the quiet sigh and slight loosening on his jaw tells Phil he’s in a good deal of pain and that the heat is already starting to work.

“Here.” Phil hands him a pill and a bagel. “Take those and try to relax.”

Clint gives him a grumpy look, but swallows the pill and chews on the bagel silently. Phil can tell when the meds kick in because Clint relaxes even further and starts slowly shifting, moving his arms and shoulders in a series of practiced motions, obviously working on stretching out his muscles. Phil spends the day working on his laptop, helping make movie choices, and jumping up to get Clint whatever he needs before Clint can even think about making the effort himself.

 

Phil’s worked from home before, usually when he’s injured or working on fixing jetlag from long haul travel, but he avoids it as best he can — it’s too quiet and still, somehow more distracting than the busy office he’s used to. Having Clint in the space, subdued as he is, somehow makes Phil settle into his own home more than before, making it easier to get his work done. When Clint pulls out his text book and starts making notes, something about the whole thing slides even more into perfect. Working quietly side by side is all he’s ever wanted of some people sometimes.

“I ordered food,” Clint says from his position lying on the couch, phone in hand. Phil’s about to protest at Clint expending the effort, but he’s sure he never heard Clint speak. Clint grins widely at him, eyes blinking slowly. “Internet,” he says, waving the phone.

“Oh,” Phil says. He hadn’t even realized what the time was and feels his stomach rumble when he looks at the clock and finds it’s after 7. “I’m sorry, you should have said.”

Clint lies back and shakes his head. “S’ok, You’ve already done so much. And you can’t get pizza in medical.”

“Pizza again?”

Clint shrugs with one shoulder, wincing as he does so. Phil feels a sudden desire to fit himself around Clint again like yesterday, be the soft comforting thing that got Clint to forget his injuries and fall back asleep so close together.

The food arrives and Clint obediently takes his pills before tucking into five times as much as he ate last night. “Need my strength,” he mumbles through a full mouth. “Get my vitamins.”

“I’m sure there’s a lot of vitamins in this six cheese pizza,” Phil smirks. Clint just grins.

Not long after they eat (and that stack of boxes in Phil’s kitchen is starting to look embarrassing), Clint’s nodding off against Phil’s shoulder again, and as tempted as Phil might be to have that warm weight close to him all night, he’s not that selfish.

“C’mon, you,” he says as he stands. Clint makes a small noise of protest having lost the thing he was leaning on and Phil puts out a hand to steady him. He squeezes gently in what he hopes is a soothing gesture. “Lets get you to bed.”

“Comfortable,” Clint mumbles. “Don’t wanna.”

Phil smiles fondly and grasps Clint’s hands in his own. They grip back immediately, and Phil braces his arms to be used as leverage. “Come on sleepy, you may be comfortable now, but I bet the morning is going to be another story.”

Clint makes an unhappy noise, but starts hoisting himself up. Phil goes with his motions and pulls before Clint can exert too much effort and neither of them are expecting it to work as well as it does. Clint pushes too hard with his legs and Phil is expecting more resistance so they stumble into one another. Phil just steadies him with arm around around the waist and walks him to the bedroom.

Thankfully, Clint is wearing comfortable clothing, having changed into it after he felt steady enough to shower somewhere around mid day. Phil absolutely doesn’t want to have to change a couple hundred pounds of sulky, sleepy muscle into bed clothes. Once up, Clint doesn’t fight him, but once down on the bed, he clings.

“Stay?”

Phil blinks, speechless, unsure of exactly what Clint is asking for.

“You’re comfortable,” Clint says, still slurring a bit, but his eyes are open and clear. “I slept— I don’t usually sleep so—”

“Easily?” Phil asks, staring at the fingers clamped around his wrist.

Clint hums agreeably, closing his eyes and nodding. “Stay.” he says again, not as much of a question this time.

Phil’s wrist is still caught by Clint’s hand when Clint shifts onto his good side, rolling away from him, and he has no choice but to kneel on the bed, and he reasons, why not? It’s his responsibility to make sure Clint’s all right, and if he’ll sleep better with Phil there, then it’s just Phil’s job, is all.

He gets under the covers and Clint wiggles a little bit, like he’s settling in, letting go of Phil as he does so. Phil doesn’t mind — that takes away the awkward issue of how this might actually work, where he’s meant to put his arms and his legs, how much space both of them are meant to occupy. He thinks hard about all these factors for a while, but soon enough sleepiness overtakes him too, and as Clint migrates ever further into his space (it’s okay, he can have all the space he needs), Phil gives in to the welcoming warmth of Clint by his side and swiftly falls asleep.

The morning is… weird. First because once again, he wakes up from one of the best night’s sleep he’s had in a while, but also because Clint is there, mashed up against him like it’s not a big deal. Maybe it isn’t? But Phil really feels like this is the sort of thing you talk about at one point, only— he kind of likes it. Sleeping well, that is. The rest is incidental. Honestly.

Clint shows signs of waking soon after Phil, and he spends a long time bracing for an impact that never comes. They get up, take turns in the bathroom, eat breakfast, and Clint takes his pills dutifully and settles into the couch and the day goes on. That night, Clint stands, hooks an arm around Phil as he’s walking past and keeps walking, eyes straight, back to Phil’s bed. There’s no conversation this time, just Clint climbing in and and rolling to his side expectantly.

Phil shrugs, kind of okay with this if they’ve decided just not to talk about it, and crawls in after Clint. He falls asleep quickly, soothed by the warmth of another person nearby.


	3. Chapter 3

Day three of Clint’s convalescence has Phil putting on a suit and Clint packing his bags. He can now reach above his head if necessary and Phil can’t take off any more time without miles of paperwork and, God forbid, reasons, so he drops Clint off at his place and proceeds in to work as usual.

When he gets to his desk, his phone buzzes.

_We should do a movie night once a month. In between the other stuff._

Phil’s smile feels soft and fond on his face. _Sounds good, but maybe no more pizza for a while._ He sends back.

_Pizza is part of the tradition now, Phil! Tradition!_

Phil chuckles and puts the phone back in his pocket, ruminating over the word ‘tradition’ for the rest of the day. He rather likes this one that they’ve fallen into lately, has enjoyed rediscovering the simple pleasure of being in the company of a friend. When he gets home that night, the apartment feels emptier than he can ever remember it feeling before.

Clint’s bruises have gone through a rainbow of colors and settled on browns, yellows, and greens by the time they hang out again two weeks later for a four-hour furniture restoration class. Two weeks later, exactly in between the their regular four week interval, they go to the cinema, though it’s a strange art house movie, so the theme — the tradition — remains intact. Phil worries as they watch colors and shapes and weird noises blare at them from the screen that this might be too out there for Clint, but when it finishes, Clint talks a mile a minute, gesturing with his hands about what it was supposed to mean, what the point of it was.

“To get a reaction, I guess,” Phil says, shrugging. “I didn’t really get it, myself.”

“Oh,” Clint says, hands dropping to his sides. “I thought you had like, a Ph.D in that stuff.”

“What? Art?”

Clint frowns. “Nah, rich guy stuff, you know. What fork to use in a fancy restaurant, what wine goes with what kinda fish. That stuff.”

Phil rolls his eyes, because Clint knows him better than that, and he’s pretty sure he’s joking.

“Pizza?” He says, nodding across the street at a promising looking hole in the wall sort of place.

While scanning the horizon and just about any advertisement he can find, Phil stumbles over a stylish ad in an indie rag that comes free with his coffee at the hole in the wall near his place that he likes to visit now and then. Their next outing is supposed to be non-movie related and Clint takes him to a bar down in Chelsea that does a quiz night. They dominate several categories — local history, ancient history, comics history, yeah there’s a theme — and even their impromptu teammates look at them with awe after they talk each other through various possible answers before deciding on the right one.

“You guys been together long?” one of them asks through his beer.

“Couple years,” Clint says carelessly, not bothering to correct any assumptions. Phil shrugs, finding it easier to let it go than to attempt to explain.

Two weeks after that, Phil takes Clint to the small video place whose advertisement caught his eye. The membership is a bit high, but they’re not a big box store and their selection is specialized enough to give them a moderately small clientele.

Clint blinks in confusion at first.

“I thought,” Phil says awkwardly, “we could stay in on movie night?”

Clint blinks at him some more and then smiles wide and genuine, “Yeah, that’d be nice. Believe it or not, I was worried about having to plan a whole evening out twice a month.”

When they get to Phil’s apartment, he makes a bit of a song and dance about the salad he’s been planning on making, promising Clint that regardless of what he might have heard, salad can be totally satisfying. Clint pretends to order pizza on his phone and Phil makes a grab for it, laughing when Clint jumps out of his way. It devolves into a very childish bit of horseplay, with underhanded tactics and Clint’s unfortunate discovery of Phil’s ticklish shoulders. It ends with Phil brandishing a knife, in a way that probably is only cute if all parties involved are highly trained SHIELD agents.

Phil’s still laughing when he starts chopping things, shooing Clint into the living room to get the movie set up. He comes back when the movie’s ready to go, frowning in the direction of the bowl of leaves that are the foundation of this masterpiece of a salad. Phil pointedly moves Clint’s phone further down the kitchen counter and Clint complains about how he’s a guest, dammit, but he grabs some plates and cutlery before grinning and disappearing back into the living room.

This salad was meant to be a stab at something healthy for Phil, but as he heaps all manner of deli meats and cheeses onto the leaves, decants tubs of olives and dip into little bowls and pulls two sticks of French bread out of the oven, he’s not so sure of how healthy this is actually going to be. Still, it’ll definitely be delicious.

“I think I know what I’m getting you for your birthday!” Clint calls out from the living room, “And it’s gonna have _frills_.”

Phil smiles to himself and digs out a few serving implements while the bread cools off enough to touch. He grabs two bottles of beer, a microbrew that got good reviews, and a bottle opener and starts to move everything to the living room. Clint’s eyes light up at the bottles and look curiously at the few tubs of condiments Phil lays out. He nips back to the kitchen, gets the bread and salad and returns once again, under Clint’s watchful eye.

“Okay,” Clint says, “the beer is good, but I’m still suspicious of this vegetable stuff.”

“Shut up and eat,” Phil says lightly, shoving bread and the salad in Clint’s direction.

One movie and a giant salad later, and they're both struggling to stay awake. They’ve slid closer and closer with the bowl on their laps between them, picking out each individual olive and piece of cheese. All that's left is a few lonely leaves and the end of a piece of bread.

Phil leans forward to put the bowl on the coffee table, pleased to find Clint's arm winding it's way around him in the easy way that Clint has, where it's no big deal, just Clint trying to get comfortable. Phil flips through TV channels, trying to find some excuse for staying right where they are for as long as possible.

Everything turns into a pleasant but sleepy blur, only to be disrupted by Clint poking him gently in the shoulder.

“C’mon, Phil,” Clint whispers. “Bed.”

Phil wants to protest, but he’s too asleep to remember why, only that he knows maybe it’s not a good idea. So he stumbles, eyes half closed, behind Clint, who keeps a single hand on him the whole journey to Phil’s bedroom. Phil is just asleep enough that it’s an actual fight with his clothing until a second set of hands appears and helps. It makes him feel funny, but soon he’s being helped into his soft, comfortable bed and the sheets are cool and crisp but the whole thing is still warm and comforting and then—

Oh.

Clint crawls in with him and then curls up close enough that Phil’s sleep-pliant muscles can feel the body heat. It takes maybe thirty seconds of internal debate before his jaw cracks in an unexpected yawn and Clint snorts and reaches out to pull him closer.

Well, okay then.

Phil doesn’t wake until late in the morning, bright light shining in through the window and bathing him in warmth. Someone moves behind him, and for a second Phil panics, because he doesn’t remember anyone… Oh. He realizes who it is because something hard and insistent is shifting against his ass, and there’s an arm loosely draped over his waist. Clint.

Phil stays where he is, because he’s not quite awake yet, despite whatever this is that’s happening right now, and he’s so comfortable. He doesn’t let himself think about it too much, because he recognizes what’s happening just enough to know that once he does start to think about it, the moment will be shattered. So he just stays where he is, and if he lets his hips respond just slightly to the movements behind him, it doesn’t seem to dissuade Clint, who Phil can only assume is still sleeping away.

It feels nice, just good enough to let him float away on it and his eyes flutter closed and only blink back open some time later when the bed shifts. This time he remembers that it’s Clint almost instantly. He croaks a “Good morning,” without moving to let Clint know he’s awake.

“Hey,” Clint says, voice also rough, but affectionate, “your coffee machine scares me. Can you start it up while I take the first bathroom run?”

So they’re not talking about it. That’s okay, because Phil isn’t sure what he’d say anyway. “Clint, you occasionally disable bombs. The coffee machine shouldn’t be too difficult for you.”

“And yet,” Clint says stretching his arms above his head, “last time it beeped ominously at me.”

Phil snorts and finishes sitting up.

“Hey,” Clint says pointing a finger at him, “It’s my job to know when the beeping turns ominous.”

Clint disappears into the bathroom and Phil slowly sits up, again feeling so well rested he feels like a different person. There’s an odd sort of calm that he feels when Clint’s in the apartment, even when he’s in the bathroom and not even there to talk to or look at. Having the solid knowledge that he’s here and safe, and that Phil himself is somehow safer because of Clint’s presence gives him a steady happiness that he doesn’t want to define. If he starts trying to define it, he’ll realize he needs Clint, and that’s scary territory.

He throws on a robe and shuffles out to the kitchen, smiling at the remnants of their dinner. Three sad looking leaves of lettuce remain in the bowl, and Phil chuckles to himself at the thought of Clint’s suspicious face.

When Clint gets out of the shower, most everything is in the dishwasher, and Phil’s just getting the various things ready to make coffee. Clint’s wearing a towel around his hips and water is beaded on the tips of his hair. Phil concentrates on the coffee tin in his hand.

“What is this? I thought coffee was gonna be waiting for me when I got outta the shower! What kinda hotel is this?”

Phil gives him one of the playful glares that he seems to give Clint a lot of. “I was going to show you how to work this old clunker,” he says, patting the machine affectionately. He looks away from Clint’s pebbled nipples as he opens one of the little compartments. “For next time.”

Clint blinks and then his entire face is taken up by what can only be described as a sheepish smile. “Yeah, okay.”

As Phil explains, Clint hovers closely over his shoulder, eventually just dropping his jaw right down onto it and humming positive understanding as Phil finishes each step. Clint disappears during the actual brewing process for a few minutes to change and when he comes back there’s a mug waiting for him, prepared exactly the way he likes it and he sips it with eyes closed and a blissful smile.

“Admit it,” Phil says from his corner of the kitchen, “it’s totally worth the extra effort.”

They eat a quiet breakfast before Clint slips out and back into the real world. They don’t explicitly talk about it, but this is how their evenings end from now on, even the ones that start out someplace else. They take turns being home base. There are tiny bags packed on occasion and eventually it turns into a change or two of clothing, the dirty stuff left behind to be laundered by the previous host.

It’s a pattern that settles over a few months and it leaves Phil feeling more centered than he has felt in a long time.

Then Karen comes into town. They don’t have a commitment of any sort, it’s closer to friends with benefits -- much to Phil’s chagrin because he hates that phrase. What they are is good friends who have a lot in common, which is hard to find outside of agency life. As soon as he opens the door to her, he feels desperate for it, intimate human contact, sex, in a way he hasn’t felt in a really long time. He reels her in with one hand while closing the door behind her, with the other and he’s got her jacket and shirt off before the third kiss.

It’s a really wild hour and a half or so. Until the doorbell rings.

Clint’s face — well, Phil’s never seen a face go from one emotion to another so quickly. He’s grinning when Phil opens the door, then he takes in Phil’s state of undress (a t-shirt and underwear) and the various bits of women’s clothing strewn about the living room (in the direction of the bedroom) and his face just falls. “Oh,” he says, sheepishly. Then his face changes again, and it actually hurts Phil to watch Clint putting on a brave face. “I guess you have company.”

Phil shakes his head, though he’s not sure why — he does have company. Karen’s in the shower, and he figures Clint can probably hear that, too. And Clint’s not an idiot. He’s not even sure why he’s trying to deny it. Clint shrugs and backs away, and now he’s wearing a grin which is just painful to look at. “Sorry to disturb you. Have fun, Phil,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Phil closes his eyes and then bangs his head against the now closed front door. God, he is an idiot. Clint Barton’s abandonment issues are a mile wide and practically stamped in glowing ink all over his file and Phil is his _friend_ and he just let his— libido fuck it all up. He dives for his phone which he left near his pants on the couch and immediately sends a text.

_Tomorrow, just you and me, please?_

He waits, phone clutched in his hand, unmoving, even as he hears Karen’s shower end.

“Phil?” she calls, wandering out in her towel, all damp and dewy and looking ready to do it all over again and any other time, it’d ramp him right back up, and even if he needed more time to recover, he’d make sure she had fun waiting. Now he just feels like an ass.

“Sorry,” he says, looking up from his phone briefly. “I blew off plans without thinking about it and I think I hurt my friend’s feelings.”

She blinks and he realizes how that sounds, but he and Clint have never actually spoken about their friendship, beyond that they feel it _is_ friendship. They’ve never spoken about their little rituals that maybe exist outside of traditional friendship. The closest they’ve come to talking about it is gruffly said half sentences while half asleep that they like the other person’s place in their lives.

Still, Karen snags her panties, they’re on the hall floor from the first — ahem — time, slips them on, and pulls Phil’s discarded shirt over her breasts and sits down next to him. “Now I feel bad,” she says lightly. “Tell him I’m sorry?”

This is why he likes her — she’s a decent human being. He smiles at her and nods, even though he’s pretty sure he and Clint will never discuss it in that amount of detail and for that he feels like a jackass all over again.

He shakes his head. “You don’t have to be sorry, it’s my fault.”

She comes over and holds her wet hair out of the way to kiss him on the cheek. Five minutes ago, Phil would have turned and kissed her properly, but now he just doesn’t feel like it. “My turn,” he says, smiling wanly, slipping away to the shower as much to lock the door and be alone than anything else.

He showers quickly, realizing as soon as the water hits him that he’s being an idiot. He and Clint don’t have that type of relationship, and he’s not even sure he wants Clint like that anyway, so he has no reason to feel like he’s been caught cheating. By the time he’s done, wrapping a towel around his waist and opening the window to let some steam out, he feels better about himself — Karen’s a good friend, and until Clint had showed up, he was having a great time. There’s no reason not to continue having a nice time. After all, he does have Clint’s blessing, his brave face was more about being left out than anything else, that Phil is sure of.

But Karen’s gone. There’s a note propped up on the coffee table beside his phone, and Phil quietly curses himself as he picks it up.

 _Something came up_ , the note says. _Let me know next time you’re on the West coast xxx K._

Phil slumps onto the couch and looks at the ceiling. He’s halfway through letting out the longest sigh of his life when his phone buzzes against the table.

_Sorry. Phil. I’m sorry. I don’t know what that was. You deserve to get laid. It’s been too long, for both of us, I’m heading out to a bar I like. Don’t worry about me. See you tomorrow._

Phil swallows, confused. Both by why Karen might find that text uncomfortable and why he finds it just as uncomfortable. Maybe more. There are flashes behind his eyes, of the scene from earlier replaying in his mind, only their positions are reversed and it’s Clint answering the door, hair mussed and skin flushed, maybe a love bite peaking out from under his shirt blinking at him in confusion.

It only makes him feel worse.

When Clint knocks on his door the next day, Phil finds a smirking, incredibly relaxed archer waiting for him.

Complete with love bite.

Phil’s happy for him, really he is, and if his eyes keep drifting towards that love bite — dark red and deep looking — it’s just because he’s curious. It’s his job to be observant, after all. He’s not jealous. It’s only fair. It’s fine.

Phil mentally rehearses what he’s going to say, rooting around in the fridge for a couple of beers and really feeling like he needs one for the first time in a long time. The trip to the bar was a success, I gather, he lamely says in his head, imagining the friendly shoulder nudge he’d accompany it with, the smirk. What was her name?

But when he comes back out of the kitchen, beers and a bowl of peanuts in hand, Clint’s bent over, looking out of the window, and his shirt’s ridden up just enough for Phil to see fresh finger bruises.

 _His name_ , Phil mentally corrects himself as he matches the pattern and sees the thumb marks on Clint’s back and then stands there for too long before shaking his head. Whatever, it’s fine, and comes over to place Clint’s beer on the windowsill and leans beside him.

“What do you see, Hawkeye?” he asks, taking a swig.

Clint blinks, startled. “Oh. I wasn’t looking.”

“Oh?” Phil blurts out, because Clint is always looking. Always.

“I was thinking,” Clint says slowly, not looking at him. “If it’s just sex and,” he smiles quickly, “I think I’d notice if she’d been here before and she hasn’t recently,” he trails off waiting for Phil to nod, which he does. “Then friend stuff,” he pauses looking uncomfortable, “our plans,” he says slowly, obviously seeking the right words, “should come first?” It’s a tentative question and Clint looks fragile in the window frame, surrounded by the gray sky and white light.

“Yes,” Phil says, because it makes him feel better right away. “Absolutely. She just surprised me and—”

“I don’t need to know,” Clint interrupts him quickly, still looking out the window. “Though it is nice to know that sex can fluster even Agent Coulson.”

Even though Clint’s not looking at him, Phil can see the hint of a smirk on his face. He bites back a rebuttal and just drinks some more beer. Phil Coulson doesn’t get flustered.

Clint orders their dinner, and Phil shoots an unimpressed look his way when the deliveryman shows up with what appears to be pizza again.

“Shh,” Clint says, pushing past him to take the boxes and pay the man. “Don’t judge a… pizza by its box.”

“My cholesterol—”

“Shh!” Clint says again, putting the boxes in the kitchen and rooting around for plates and napkins.

When Clint stops shooing Phil’s hands away and opens the box, it still looks like pizza.

“Super Veggie Buster pizza.” Clint says, like he’s revealing the last part of a magic trick.

“Oh,” Phil says. “That explains the knife and fork.” He eyes the monstrosity in front of them.

Clint nods. “Yes, as soon as you need a knife and fork, it’s not pizza.”

“Don’t tell that to Chicago,” Phil says, examining the two inches of vegetables, all of which look grilled and delicious on their own, trying to figure out how to get a slice onto his plate without making a mess.

“Deep dish,” Clint says digging a slice out with nimble fingers and minimal vegetable loss, “is just lasagna with a complex.”

Phil laughs and steals the plate from Clint, forcing Clint to go in and get an extra slice for himself, not looking the least bit put out. By the time they finish their first slices and move onto the next ones -- barely: that’s a lot of vegetables! -- something seems to relax between them. Like maybe they both worried that bringing sex into it, even as barely connected as it is, would ruin this.

It doesn’t.

It does occasionally make scheduling a bit more complex.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s not that Phil has a ‘girl in every port’, but in his life he’s never had too much difficulty finding sex if he really wants to. It’s that women who travel a lot, like he does, tend to be looking for the same things he wants. Companionship, a handful of things in common, sexual compatibility, and mostly no strings. He figured that out years ago and these days he doesn’t really need to go out and find someone; usually by the time he starts missing sex, someone has come into town.

The year and a half or so he and Clint have been doing this is actually the longest its been in a while but then, he thinks back, oh, yes, there had been one or two emails he’d sent negative replies to because there had been plans, once or twice with Clint.

Three months later, Stacy calls with tickets to something vaguely interesting sounding and because it’s mostly an excuse to have something to talk about over a long weekend and a good reason to spend a long amount of time peeling a beautiful woman out of beautiful things, Phil realizes this time it’s a conscious choice. The tickets are for Clint’s night.

“I can’t make that night,” he says, more aware than ever that Clint is right next to him, eating his lunch. “But maybe the next night we can still get together?”

Phil makes arrangements, aware that his ears feel warm and hoping against hope that he’s not blushing. Clint’s smiling at him once he puts the phone down, and Phil concentrates on his sandwich.

Phil’s so used to Clint sleeping over at this point, that he doesn’t think about changing the sheets until Stacy’s down to her (expensive looking, extremely sexy) underwear and stops, taking in the mussed sheets.

“Philip,” she says, mockingly clutching at pearls she’s already taken off. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone.”

Phil opens his mouth to put her straight — he’s not ‘seeing’ Clint, not like that — but then realizes that it’s probably quite hard to explain what he and Clint do, and he’s not sure he wants to defend himself to her.

But he has to say something, so he blurts out, “It’s a guy, actually.”

Stacy looks delighted, which is weird, but then she pulls Phil close and kisses him again, harder than before, and asks, “Is he a good kisser?”

He should probably explain, but, well. Apparently Stacy’s into this whole idea and Phil’s not sure how to explain any of it, so he goes along with it, and when Stacy pulls away from his cock to look up at him and ask, lips all wet and shiny, “Does he suck cock better than me?” he comes harder than he has in years.

He tries not to feel too weird about things the morning after, when there’s a warm body wrapped around his that doesn’t have the sleepy erection he’s grown strangely fond of.

Before he can do much of anything, her arms squeeze him and Stacy moves over him, rubbing her thigh against his morning erection and it feels so good, like an itch that’s needed scratching for so long and finally, finally someone was reaching it. He moans helplessly into her mouth and pulls her to him, settling her hips over his and rocking gently. “Nice,” he says between kisses.

“Yes,” she hisses, rubbing his cock against her wetness. “Do you like morning sex? With him?”

Phil shudders hard. He wants it now, more than anything, and Stacy is shoving a condom into his hands and he shifts them, pinning her to the bed. Her hands help him roll the condom on and he feels absolutely desperate by the time they line up and he hooks his arms under her knees and and she folds easily, encouraging him.

“Yes,” Stacy whispers, “hard. Phil. Fast and hard.”

It’s like all the mornings he’s woken up with someone else’s hard-on poking him in the back and not been able to do anything about his own have been rolled into one, and he does fuck her hard and fast, like he has to make up for all those unsatisfied mornings and all those ignored urges.

Stacy moans and writhes and wraps her legs around him, making encouraging noises, but Phil’s not even thinking about her, not really.

His orgasm last night had been incredible, but this one is something else, and Phil has to brace himself against the bed frame, he’s going so hard. When he eventually slumps to one side, breathless and unable to even focus his eyes, he feels like he’s run a marathon.

“Wow,” says Stacy, just as dazed as Phil. “Wow.”

Phil nods his head — about all he’s physically able to do right now. “Wow,” he agrees.

Stacy looks blissed out all the way through breakfast, which they have when they can finally move again, and remains looking gloriously sated all the way through her shower and getting dressed. Phil is about to slip into the bathroom when Stacy touches his shoulder and he catches sight of her out of the corner of her his eye. Her short damp hair and purple buttoned shirt (Stacy always comes with an overnight bag) hit something inside of Phil hard.

He’s kissing her with serious intent before he even realizes what’s happening and Stacy, makes a muffled, surprised sound but melts into him without any real argument. He’s hard again, which is a miracle after that morning round only a few hours earlier but she arches into him, her jeans rubbing roughly through his boxers.

“Condom in my purse,” she gasps, already reaching for it and then tossing it to Phil, who is already going for the button on her pants. With the advantage of wearing less clothing, Phil is ready before Stacy, kissing her again, hard and wet, before turning her to face the wall.

“Yes,” she nods. “Okay yes, this is good.” She gasps as Phil shoves her clothes out of the way and enters her in one smooth thrust. He’s ravenous for it and the last two times means he’s got a certain amount of stamina and he can lose himself in Stacy’s panting moans and the endless thrust into someplace hot and wet and clenching.

Phil’s never actually run out of condoms before.

He’s frantically looking through a drawer, wondering at how it’s even possible to be hard again after the amount of times he’s come in the last 24 hours, when Stacy laughs and shakes her head.

“Maybe it’s a sign,” she says, tugging at Phil’s hand until he stops and closes the drawer. “I should get going anyway.”

“No!” Phil cries, because if she leaves, then… he’s going to have to think about this, and he really doesn’t want to think about this. “I’ll go to the store. I’ll be five minutes.”

Stacy narrows her eyes for a second, and Phil feels like she can see right through him. She kisses him and presses their foreheads together. “Whatever it is that you’re not talking about with your man-friend? Maybe you should talk about it.”

Phil remains tight lipped, because there isn’t anything to talk about. Stacy rolls her eyes and kisses him again before gently touching the end of his nose with a finger and turning away to gather her things.

Once she’s gone, Phil looks around at his empty apartment before solemnly gathering up the bedsheets to take them down to the laundry room.

He’s got evidence on his body, bites, scratches, some bruises, that linger as he goes into work the next morning. He’s even a little sore, none of the sex had been anything less than athletic. Clint wanders into his office around 10, sporting a familiar lax swagger that Phil has come to recognize as the remnants of Clint’s sexual escapades. That they almost always happen to happen the same night as Phil’s is a coincidence, because they also happen on nights Phil isn’t getting laid. It’s just— it also always happens on the nights he is.

He winces at the wrong moment, and Clint catches it. “Woah boss.” No first names at work, their first unspoken rule from long ago. “Had a good evening?”

“Ran out of condoms,” Phil says almost sulkily. He’s actually a little bitter about it, but only in really weird ways.

Clint actually looks shocked. “Like, before you got going or? Because last time I went looking for your nail clippers there were—”

Phil gives him a look that could burn leather.

“Whoa.”

Over the next few months, something like a pattern emerges, again. Clint sleeps over, they don’t talk about it. Clint sleepily grinds his dick into Phil’s ass every morning. They don’t talk about it. Phil spaces out his friends-with-benefits trysts and works out everything he and Clint don’t talk about with 24 hours of athletic sex. He doesn’t even think about that.

Their schedules are busy and time manages to crawl and fly by at the same time and suddenly it’s nearly four years into their friendship. Clint is just starting semester number four and it’s two and a half years into their unspoken agreements about casual sex when Phil stops inviting his ‘friends’ over. As good as it feels to work out his sexual tension with a willing partner, it inevitably leaves Phil feeling hollow and gloomy. He thinks for a while about asking Clint if perhaps he might want to come over on the days after instead of before, because all Phil wants after these marathon sex sessions is the warmth and permanence of Clint in his arms. And he’s not going to get that, so he needs to stop.

Clint notices, of course. He notices everything always, and Phil should know better than to expect to get something like this past Hawkeye.

He’s at Phil’s apartment one night, after a totally unhealthy salad, their arms slung around each other as per the norm these days, and he squeezes the muscles of Phil’s shoulder before running his hand down Phil’s back and up to his neck, feeling the tension that Phil would normally have released by now with the help of one of his friends. “You alright? You’re all clenchy.”

Phil snorts. “Clenchy?”

“Tight, you know. You stressed about something?” As he’s talking, Clint rubs his thumbs right into places Phil didn’t know needed it, and he feels like he’s going to unravel.

His breath hitches because its been a while since anyone has touched him other than Clint and Clint usually sticks to easy, casual stuff, sleeping in the same bed aside. But now his thumb is digging into his shoulder and it feels amazing because there is a knot there and it _has_ been bothering him. Clint continues to press, alternating gentle rubbing and strong fingers digging into hard muscle and releasing them from their frozen states.

“Geez, Phil,” Clint mutters, moving to get some more leverage, “you really need to get la— relax.”

Phil’s entire back stiffens right back up. He’s not sure if Clint’s change of words is helping or hurting, but in general the topic makes him feel bruised and raw.

“Phil?” Clint asks, sounding careful, fingers paused but laying flat across Phil’s back.

“I—” Phil looks away from Clint’s profile. “It wasn’t doing much for me. It’s not the kind of… encounter… I want anymore.”

Clint’s hand stop, briefly, before returning to rubbing gentle circles into Phil’s back. It feels amazing still. Soon it’ll feel too good.

“Are you,” Clint starts hesitantly, “does that mean you’re looking to settle down?”

Phil slumps back into the couch, pinning Clint’s hand in place before it can do any more damage to his self control. “I don’t know.” And he means that. He doesn’t know what he wants, mostly, he just knows it wasn’t what he was getting with those women. As nice as they were.

Clint lets the topic drop and Phil relaxes a bit because it feels like the status quo hasn’t been changed, yet.

A few weeks later, they’re at the pub quiz again — different night, different team mates, but they both enjoy the experience so it’s one of the few that makes it onto the small rotation of outings they’re willing to repeat — when he watches Clint shake his head at the pretty waitress with the excellent, quite frankly, _everything_ and then again at the busboy who looks like he might be really flexible.

“That waitress was cute,” Phil says when Clint rejoins him.

Clint looks surprised — flirting with other people isn’t something they tend to talk about either. Then his face settles before constructing itself into something like a leer. “Want me to put in a good word for you?”

Phil shakes his head, and before he has to think up something to say, the quizmaster calls everyone to attention for the scores.

Over the next short while, Clint’s more irritable than usual, and Phil doesn’t notice any more love bites or scratch marks or bruises that aren’t related to work. He’s still there for movie night, still migrates into Phil’s space and sleeps in Phil’s bed every time, but it’s pretty clear that Clint’s stopped having sex, or if he is, it’s certainly not very satisfying.

He’d ask about it, but, well, they don’t talk about that kind of thing.

It happens again. They’re at an art gallery, multimedia exhibits that are both interesting and accessible to both of them. There’s a waiter who smiles shyly but slips Clint a bit of paper with his number on it. It’s actually very smooth, and Phil wouldn’t have caught if if he hadn’t spent decades passing information to other people while looking busy elsewhere. Clint smiles apologetically and shakes his head, handing it back. Then it’s a patron, slick with wealth and sureness who doesn’t even talk to Clint, just slips his number into the nearest pocket while maintaining eye contact. Clint throws the business card into the nearest trash, in full view of anyone who cared to look. 

The look on the guy’s face is marvelous. He and Clint laugh about it later.

“Are you feeling alright?” Phil asks, alcoholic bravery helping him out.

“Yeah,” Clint says easily. “Just… not in the mood for strangers.”

They knock elbows companionably, but something inside Phil starts to worry.

A few months later, something strange happens. Phil doesn’t actually mean for it to happen at all, but he almost gets a back-alley blowjob from an old friend he runs into in the grocery store. What’s strange about it, other than the fact that it’s yet another casual encounter that he actually does not want, is that it’s a guy. Mike, who he hasn’t seen in years, aged well. His hair is still blond, long but carefully combed away from his face, and he’s well-toned. Mike is younger than Phil, and had been under his command some ten years earlier, and whatever repressed spark they might have had flared hot and high when their eyes met.

When he closes his eyes he sees Clint.

That’s when he stops it.

“Fuck.” He closes his eyes tightly after Mike leaves, a more understanding look on his face than Phil probably deserves. “Fuck my life.”

Phil starts thinking that maybe he needs to talk to Clint, say something… But what would he say? “I think I subconsciously want to…” No, he can’t even follow that thought process to its logical conclusion. Maybe he should try dating again. It’d fuck with movie night, but maybe movie night is fucking with Phil. Maybe he needs to stop sleeping in the same bed with a guy who isn’t even interested in him.

But before Phil can unravel things in his mind enough to articulate them, his delaying has reached epic proportions. Its been nearly two months since Mike, and Clint walks into his office with the most pronounced ‘just had sex’ swagger Phil’s ever seen on him.

“Good night?” he asks automatically, because that’s what they do.

Clint smiles widely. “Yeah, I think so.”

Phil smiles back at him and he is happy for him because, in general, he likes it when Clint is happy and he isn’t shocked that at nine months into celibacy, Clint finally cracked.

Their conversation meanders a bit. Mostly it’s about work, but then Clint’s phone buzzes and when he reads the text his face melts into the sweetest grin Phil has ever seen.

Phil’s instincts have his stomach falling. That’s not a one night stand smile. He keeps his curious face on and when Clint looks up his face changes. It flashes to guilt and then back to a shy smile. “I’ve…” he hesitates briefly. “You were right. Those one nights were starting to be less fun.”

He knows before Clint says it, that he’s dating someone for real, not just sex, but more. For companionship, maybe even for love. For all the things that he and Clint do for each other already. God, he’s an idiot.

But the movie nights don’t stop. At least not right away. Clint still comes over, they continue their way through New York’s finest delivery places, they still migrate towards a particular spot on the couch. Phil’s taken to thinking of it as ‘cozying up’, because cuddling (which it is) sounds too intimate, even in his own head. They even still sleep together, and that’s… fine, as far as Phil’s concerned. He still sleeps better with Clint in his space than he does without.

They even have a few careful conversations about Clint’s new relationship. Turns out, Clint really wasn’t in the mood for strangers after all. One of his classmates in the ‘lab’ Dr. Jennings runs out of the museum, one class Clint must attend in person, has been pretty interested in Clint for a while. Clint had actually turned him down once or twice before, Clint is specific and Phil absolutely doesn’t want to ask. He feels a little something like betrayal when the vehicle of some of their early understandings turns into what Phil is sure is the beginning of the end.

Still, their interactions, their relationship, remains alarmingly unchanged, until one night, a few months into it, when Phil is just starting to relax about it. He stands and stretches before holding out a hand to help Clint up, because it’s bed time and they were both drifting off, and Clint looks away.

“I, uh, I should go,” he says, looking at his hands.

“Oh.”

“Ben, he uh…”

“No, it’s fine,” Phil interrupts. He can’t stand to hear what Clint’s boyfriend has to say about this thing. He doesn’t want to know what an outside perspective looks like. He’s been bracing for this for two weeks, maybe more-- no definitely more, but two weeks ago on their last outing, Clint had gone straight home instead of to Phil’s place. He’d played it off as an aberration, but Phil could tell there was something else going on. There had been a few frowning faces directed at Clint’s cell phone during some text messages for a few days by then. “You need a cab number?”

Clint shakes his head and gets up, awkwardly close to Phil, who’s still standing there with his hand out. Phil’s about to say something blasé, as soon as he thinks of it, but then he’s being hugged tightly and the words don’t come. It’s over as soon as Phil’s on board enough to put his arms back around Clint, and then Clint’s out of the door and gone, leaving Phil to toss and turn all night long, feeling more alone than ever.


	5. Chapter 5

The poor sleep continues over a period of over a month. It’s not just the nights he’d normally have Clint nearby, but it seems to bleed over into all of the other nights as well, and it must be starting to show because even Fury blinks at him and looks like he’s about to make sure Phil is okay before moving onto whatever it is he needs from Phil.

Clint and Phil go to a play in the middle and he has a tough time keeping his eyes open, but he makes it through only to nearly fall asleep on the train ride home without Clint next to him to keep him up. Their next movie night, however, he’s stretched too far. On any other night he’d have crawled into bed and began the tossing and turning already. But Clint is there and for the first time in weeks he doesn’t want to go to sleep. Unfortunately, they’re not done eating more than fifteen minutes before his eyelids are too heavy to fight and Clint’s body pressed up next to him is practically a hypnotic trigger.

A gentle shaking wakes him up, but his eyelids don’t want to move, he’s so tired. Truthfully, the poor sleep has been happening for longer than Clint’s change in routine. He’s been sleeping worse and worse since Clint announced that he was dating someone seriously. His only truly peaceful nights were— well. That’s over now.

“Phil?” Clint’s voice cuts through the fog and he finally forces his eyes open, only to yawn almost immediately.

When he blinks the sleepy tears and fog out of his eyes, Clint’s face swims in front of him, frowning, looking deeply troubled. He’s still half asleep, not even aware of his own limbs when it happens. His hand raises and traces the parallel lines between Clint’s expressive eyes that are bunched up in worry. “You’re sad,” he whispers, and Clint’s eyes clench shut even as he leans into the touch.

“Phil,” Clint’s voice breaks, “I’m worried about you.”

Phil shakes his head but doesn’t take his hand away from Clint’s face, instead trailing his fingers along Clint’s slightly stubbly jaw until he’s cupping it. The lines don’t go away. “I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.”

“You always look so tired.” Clint’s jaw moves under Phil’s hand.

“I don’t sleep so good anymore,” Phil says, finally taking his hand away, because it’s not his place to touch Clint. It’s not his place have any of this.

“C’mon,” Clint says softly, straightening up and holding out a hand. “Lets get you to bed.”

Phil takes the hand and follows Clint, even though it’s not quite right — he knows it’s not right — but he’s too tired to resist the warmth of Clint’s arms pulling him down into the bed beside him. Clint presses himself against Phil’s back and Phil tries as hard as he can to hold on to the moment, savor it because he knows this isn’t going to happen again, but minutes after he’s closed his eyes, he’s asleep.

He wakes up alone. His breath rattles in his chest alarmingly and it takes long minutes of breathing deeply with his eyes shut tightly before he can face the day without worry of breaking down. Even then, it feels hollow.

It takes him a scant few hours to realize he needs to be elsewhere. A lazy Sunday in his apartment is the worst reminder, so he goes to work. It’s not much better, and with a sinking heart he realizes there’s no part of his life that Clint hasn’t touched. He digs into a pile of paperwork and stays there until it’s late. He should go home, but he can’t. Eventually he curls up on the sofa in his office and falls into a light sleep. It’s not very restful, but he’s gotten used to that.

In the morning he changes into a fresh shirt and tie, grabs the largest mug of coffee he can find, and tries to settle into his new life, or rather his old one. Worker bee with two tickets and no one to take with him. Maria stops in just after his usual arrival time and drops the usual Monday morning chatter on his desk.

“Good God,” she says, her voice uncharacteristically high in shock. “Are you sick?”

The embarrassment shoots through him immediately. This is ridiculous; he’s a grown man for God’s sake. “Just an especially difficult nightmare cycle.” It’s not really a lie. When he does sleep deep and long enough for dreams these days, they’re all uniformly terrible. He feels a little guilty using it as a true excuse though. He doesn’t like making light of a serious matter like that.

Maria’s face softens in concern, but he manages to brush her off.

As the morning drags on, other people’s minor mistakes just make his shoulders and stomach tighten, and the younger agents duck for cover as his frowning face stalks down the corridors. All the sleepless nights are catching up with him, and by the time Maria checks in with him around lunch, he has a genuine worry he’ll probably catch something because his immune system won’t have the energy to fight. Maria keeps poking her head round the door and narrowing her eyes at him, and comes by with soup at lunch time, obviously not fooled by his assurances.

“Would you stop fussing?” Phil gripes, but the soup is warm and delicious, and he must be getting sick if cafeteria food has suddenly started to taste good.

He’s struggling to stay awake by mid-afternoon, and when Maria makes her rounds again (doesn’t she have better things to do?) she hands him a key. “Go,” she says. “There are blankets and a white noise machine.”

Phil finds the room that the key belongs to, deep in the back of the offices on the 12th floor, he finds what appears to be Maria Hill’s secret getaway. There’s a bed with lots of pillows, a soft feather comforter, and a white noise machine just like she said. If Phil had the brain power, he’d be trying to figure out just how she swung this little excess with Fury, but he just about falls into the bed and is out like a light, the unfamiliar room relaxing him in a way that his own bedroom and office could not. His last thought before dropping off involves a crazy plan about hotel rooms.

He wakes up to the sound of an unfamiliar boot step. It’s Maria checking up on him again.

“You should have woken up when I opened the door.” She’s looking at him with that assessing gaze of hers. “Have you been sleeping at all?”

Phil pushes himself upright, wincing at the cracks his body makes. He must have passed out hard and not moved at all. “How long have I been here.”

Maria sits down next to him. “Long enough for Agent Barton to start making pouty faces in my direction when I wouldn’t tell him where you were.”

Phil sighs and rubs at his eyes. Next to him Maria is making a crinkling noise. When he looks up there’s a bar of chocolate in her hands. She breaks off a piece and hands it to him. He takes it with a small smile and slips it into his mouth. Its quality surprises a moan of appreciation out of him and he smiles as he slows down his chewing to savor the taste.

Maria waits for him to finish it before asking. “Did you break up with Barton?”

He chokes on the last of the melted chocolate in his mouth before looking at her with wide eyes. “What?”

“Oh come on.” Maria pats his shoulder. “You’re pretty discreet, but you’ve also had a sudden uptick in current cultural events. It’s hard not to notice when you both start talking about one play after another and other social events.”

Phil stares at her for a long moment before looking away. God, he’s an idiot. “We weren’t dating. It wasn’t— we’re just friends.” Even as he says the words they sound like lies to his own ears. Maria looks unconvinced, too.

Phil shakes his head. “Whatever it… was, it’s over now. Clint’s seeing someone, and I’m happy for him.” He looks at Maria, because this is the truth, and she needs to know, someone needs to know: “I just want him to be happy.”

“He doesn’t seem too happy now.”

There’s no way he’s ever going to be able to explain what this thing between him and Clint is. Was. There’s no point in even trying. Maria offers him some more chocolate and waits. It’s not easy for Phil to say, but at this point, what else is left?

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, the words seeming to leave a gaping hole inside of him.

She stares at him, once again assessing, processing. “Well,” she finally says, “this might seem like a radical notion but, have you tried talking to him?”

Phil snorts, a burst of laughter bubbling up. God she had hit it on the head. “Talk?” he giggles. “Why on earth would we do that?” The laughter keeps coming, he can’t control it and Maria’s starting to make worried noises, but it’s just— it’s so fucking funny. It keeps coming until it abruptly changes into something harder that chokes his chest. He manages to swallow it back, but not before he lets out a single sob into his hands.

“Oh Phil,” Maria says softly, pulling him in for a rare hug. “How long has this been eating you up inside?”

Phil doesn’t answer her. There are too many choices and he already feels too exposed. Nearly five years? The five months Clint’s been dating? The last six weeks of sleeping alone? They’re all valid answers, but they all say far too much about the situation he’s managed to get himself into.

Maria squeezes his shoulder and shoves another bar into his hands. “I’d let you stay here all day if I thought it’d help, but I suspect the nap is the most good hiding in this room will do.”

He nods in agreement and is grateful that she leaves him to gather himself up alone and face the world in his own time. Clint is in his office when he makes it back there. Phil fights the impulse to turn on his heel and run.

“Phil!” Clint springs to his feet and then fidgets. “I mean, sir. I was looking for you.”

Phil is a Senior SHIELD agent. He’s faced killers, brutal psychopaths, uptight generals, and more, and yet Clint standing there, looking worried and lost nearly does him in. “I haven’t been sleeping well. Maria let me into what I’m sure is some sort of secret female inner sanctum for a few hours of quiet.”

Clint’s face goes pained, briefly, before firming up into resolve. “I was thinking,” he says slowly, “I know we’re supposed to go out next time, but you’ve been looking so tired, we should do another movie night?” As he says it, Clint curls into his own body, folding his arms and hugging his chest tightly.

It’s a bad idea. Phil knows it and from the look of it Clint knows it too. He starts to shake his head and Clint’s shoulders slump. “I don’t think it’s—”

“Please,” Clint says in a low voice, “one more time. I know there are things—” He swallows. “It’s time we actually talk.”

Phil is speechless. Look at Clint, using his grownup words, Phil can almost see what being in a relationship is doing for Clint and it’s nothing but good. The feeling of shame deepens. “Okay,” he says faintly, “movie night. Next Saturday.” At least this way there will be a definitive end instead of a painfully slow slide into nothing. He has to wait just shy of two weeks for it, but at least it’s on the calendar now.

Maria gives him a death glare when he says ‘see you tomorrow’, so he agrees to work from home the next day in a compromise; Maria’s about ready to drag him down to medical to have someone shoot him full of sedatives. Though once home, he doesn’t sleep properly and then can’t concentrate on anything the next day. The apartment is too empty and too filled with guilty thoughts. Phil goes to a Starbucks in the end, holing himself up in a corner and doing useless things like filing emails and tidying his computer desktop.

He goes in for the rest of the week, but the gray fog of near sleep deprivation follows him around everywhere along with a sad trail of empty coffee cups and he gets hardly anything done. Eventually he farms out anything with priority to someone with a better chance at not making mistakes. By the end of the week, he has the tidiest office he’s ever had and filing cabinets that have never been more organized. He feels like a man on death row — awaiting an inevitable end. He’s almost looking forward to hearing Clint say, ‘we shouldn’t be friends any more’ or something, whatever it is, that the whole thing should never have begun in the first place. At least that’s definitive.

He feels like an ending, a real one, will release him from this interminable limbo. Perhaps that will give him the impetus to move on at last or at least allow him to return to his earlier styles of bad sleep and not his current tossing and turning. There are other bases he could work at. Maybe it’s about time he cashed in some of Fury’s good will. He flashes to the incredibly easy sleep he’d had in Maria’s hidden room and thinks that maybe changing venues is the ultimate solution to at least some of his problems.

The idea of a fresh start is invigorating. It gives him motivation and the first bit of real energy he’s had in a while. The reasons might be terrible and they’ll likely weigh him down at some point in the future, but the act of preparing, of coming up with the many thousands of things that would need doing, thinking of ways to begin again, would help temper the feelings. By the time his doorbell rings with his food, because he’s too damn tired to cook, on the interim Saturday afternoon one week before D day, he’s got lists, and lists of lists.

The fresh start idea helps bolster his mood for the next week, as the countdown to the inevitable ticks on. Researching other postings, real estate, furniture, neighborhoods, all of that, keeps him afloat during the hours of work he manages to get done. It’s doing an excellent job of distracting him, so much so that he walks back into his office after lunch and is surprised to find Clint standing in the middle of it looking lost. Surprised because he managed a good few hours without thinking of the Clint problem at all.

“Barton?” he asks carefully. They’re at work and work means last names and being professional, but Clint looks ready to break apart with a stiff wind. Clint is staring, sightlessly, down at his desk and jumps when Phil’s voice interrupts him. “Sir!” He blinks and then looks very flustered. “Sorry, I was just handing in the IA-43s from the incident in Florida.”

Phil nods because those were part of his afternoon to-do list, so it’s nice not to have to hunt them down. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” He shifts around Clint, and it’s as easy as ever to share a tight space — they’d had that before any of this ever started — and takes a seat at his desk. Phil is reshuffling the papers around so he can organize for his next meeting when he realizes Clint is still standing there. He looks up with a curious eye. Interacting at work is the one thing he’s managed to maintain through all of this, so it’s almost relaxing to have Clint standing there, looking as nervous as that one time with the paint cans and the nerf arrows.

“I just wanted to ask—” Clint fidgets, “I wanted to make sure— this weekend?”

Phil fights to keep his face from falling. Of course he remembers this weekend, the Last Movie Night, what the hell is— his eyes drift down to follow Clint’s eye line and he sees one of his lists. It’s mostly innocuous, it’s not titled or anything, but it lists out five posting availabilities that Phil would be qualified for, and Clint isn’t an idiot.

“Yes,” Phil says, letting the seriousness creep into his voice. “I’ll be there to answer the doorbell on Saturday.”

Clint doesn’t look too reassured. If anything, he looks more lost than ever, but he still nods and says a quiet thanks and heads out. Phil has no idea what that means, at all.

The rest of the work week is rough, but bearable. Inevitability and realizing he’s powerless to change some things settles over Phil’s shoulders, and while Maria still pokes her head in to check on him regularly, her worried look slowly softens out. Though, it could be she’s just gotten bored with his issues. Phil isn’t ruling that out at all.

He wakes up on Saturday in a decent mood. He’d taken the time on Friday to get in a good two hours or so at the on-site gym before heading back to his place. Sleep hadn’t been perfect, but he’d been exhausted enough to get at least one solid chunk of four hours in before the tossing and turning resumed.

The good mood evaporates with the sight of Clint standing in his doorway, a movie in one hand and a plastic bag of food in the other. As always, it’s good to see Clint, but he knows this afternoon is going to be terrible. Clint smiles at him, tentatively, and then slips into the apartment, nearly silent. It’s unnerving. Clint can be silent as a ghost, but has no problem being loud and boisterous when quiet isn’t needed. This serious Clint is scaring him.

Just as quietly, Clint takes out flatware and dishes and then sets a bowl of wonton soup in front of Phil with an expectant look.

“No pizza?” Phil asks, because joking with Clint is second nature.

“You’ve been looking like shit,” Clint says, eyes soft. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

Phil eats his soup dutifully after that. He even manages a plate full of chicken and cashews, rice and steamed vegetables. Still, it’s nothing close to his normal weekend gluttony with Clint. The lack of decent sleep has killed his appetite, which isn’t helping his energy levels one bit.

Eventually, he can’t force another bite and Clint has already cleaned up the rest of the food. He’s about to head to the living room with the movie when Phil can’t do it anymore.

“Clint, stop.”

Clint freezes but doesn’t turn around.

Phil gets up but stops a few feet away from Clint’s stiff back. “I thought we could just be friends.” The words are painful; they want to stick in his throat, and the food in his stomach suddenly turns into a leaden stone. “I don’t know what we were doing, but it wasn’t just friends.” Clint turns finally, still looking tense, but he nods in agreement. “But I like you, I like spending time with you and after you started to see B-Ben,” he stutters over the name like a school boy, “I thought we could try that, be regular friends. I really wanted that because your friendship has meant so much to me, but I can’t.” Clint makes a noise then, pained and sad, “Maybe… after some time, we can try, but I can’t—”

“I broke up with Ben,” Clint blurts, looking miserable. “Please don’t move away. I broke up with Ben. We can go back to what it was. That was— that was good.” Clint’s face shifts as he finishes his sentence, his lips and eyes get softer, like the memories make him happy even as his whole body curls up in the picture of misery.

Phil blinks in shock. It takes a few seconds to get his mouth to stop flapping and form actual words. “What?”

Clint comes closer to him, until they’re almost touching. Phil can feel the heat radiating off of Clint, or maybe he’s just extra sensitive to Clint in general these days.

“Do you remember,” Clint says softly after a fortifying breath, holding Phil’s gaze, “maybe a little more than a year ago, when you told me you stopped seeing your lady friends?”

Phil can’t help but smile a bit at the phrase ‘lady friends’, but he nods.

“I thought...” Clint reaches up to touch Phil’s neck, gently letting his whole hand rest against his skin, Clint’s thumb just a few millimeters shy of stroking Phil’s jaw line, and it feels so good that Phil has to fight to keep a reaction from bubbling to the surface. “I thought maybe— I stopped sleeping around, too, when you told me, because I thought it wasn’t fair.”

“Oh Clint,” Phil starts, but pauses when Clint shakes his head.

“I should have said something then,” Clint keeps going, even though he looks like he’d rather do anything but. “I wanted to, I think that’s why I started turning people down in front of you?”

Phil remembers thinking that suddenly it all seemed so obvious. While he’d always been able to tell when someone was eyeing Clint, suddenly the come-ons seemed everywhere instead of quietly behind a curtain of mutual silence. For a while, Phil thought he was just extra sensitive.

“I couldn’t figure out how to— I don’t know why it seemed so hard to just _talk_ to you.”

“I understand,” Phil says quietly, “it seemed impossible because the idea of—”

“Yeah,” Clint nods, “I didn’t want to ruin it.” He stops for a few seconds, closing his eyes, chest heaving just a little. “I hoped— Because you did it first, I hoped that maybe you were trying to— that you were working up the courage to—” Clint stops and makes a frustrated sound. “The only reason I said yes to Ben was because I thought you were going to, but you never—” His shoulders slump and the hand still touching Phil’s neck so gently twitches a little. “I got mad.” Clint’s face ducks away. “Around month nine I got mad and I wanted— I don’t know— That look on your face when you realized it wasn’t a one night stand, that wasn’t as satisfying as I thought—”

Phil’s brain is fast; it’s one of the reasons Fury recruited him in the first place. He can take bits of evidence and make connections faster than most of his peers. He’s also a man who believes in heroes and believing in heroes means you sometimes believe in other things, like hope. Clint’s explanation only gets as far as it does because Phil is so shocked, shocked that he missed this, that he’s been such a coward. So he takes a deep breath and remembers how to hope again, by making his arms move despite the fear boiling in his belly, by crossing those last few inches to Clint, by taking a great big giant leap while his heart threatens to pound out of his chest not caring if there’s a net to catch him or not, by doing what he’s wanted to do for longer than he remembers, and finally, God damned finally, kissing him.

It’s nothing more than a gentle press of lips against lips at first, especially because Clint freezes briefly, still in the middle of his slightly meandering explanation, before whimpering quietly and surging, pulling Phil to him and opening his mouth to return the kiss and it’s all so desperate as they clutch at each other and hold on tight that its dizzying.

Phil is familiar with Clint’s strength — knows first hand just how much power is contained in his honed muscles from years of working together — but this is the first time it’s been directed towards him with any kind of romantic intent. The hand on Phil’s jaw angles him just so, and he goes with it, happily moving wherever Clint wants him. Because Clint wants him. The other arm wraps around Phil’s waist and draws him closer, and there: that’s what Phil’s been missing all this time. Intent.

He’s been so frightened for so long about giving in to what he wants that it’s almost a struggle to get his arms to do anything, but when he does convince them to wrap around Clint, he moans right into Phil’s mouth, as if he’s been wanting this just as much as Phil has. Which he has, because no one breaks up with their boyfriend just so their friend will feel better.

Phil has had his share of kisses over the last few years, but it’s not until now that he realizes quite how much he had wanted them all to be with the man he’s kissing, who’s kissing him like its more necessary than oxygen. He kisses Clint like it’s the only time he’ll get, because he’s not going to take any chances, not now. Clint’s thumb runs over Phil’s cheek, back and forth so tenderly, at odds with the way his other hand clutches Phil tightly. It takes Phil a second to realize when Clint’s trying to pull away. Phil pulls back and looks at him, terrified he’s going to see regret but mostly sure that he won’t.

What he finds are Clint’s eyes dark, but sparkling, not just with happiness but with brimming tears along the edges, and his cheeks flushed pink, pushed up by the widest smile Phil has seen on Clint in a very long time, Phil’s face matches. Phil’s eyes are prickling and he’s smiling, and it feels like he hasn’t smiled in forever.

“You’re a good kisser,” Clint says and flushes to an even brighter red and Phil laughs, feeling lighter than air, as he leans in for another. Clint gives it to him easily, like there’s nothing he’d rather be doing. When they part again, Clint takes a moment to look his fill, making Phil squirm at the attention until Clint finally shakes his head and says, “Has anyone ever told you how amazing you are?”

Phil can feel his own blush heating up as he shakes his head, careful not to dislodge Clint’s hand. “Not in a long time.”

“You are,” Clint says, bringing his other hand up to Phil’s face, both thumbs tracing sloppy circles on Phil’s cheeks. “You are,” it’s said with so much confidence, “so amazing.”

Phil wants to disagree, wants to explain he was scared and about to run away. Sure, he’d been phrasing it as letting Clint be happy and yes, it was a lot of that, but it was also fear. Terrifying fear, the likes of which he’s never felt, not even with a gun to his face. Instead he draws Clint in for another kiss, soft and desperate all at once it sends an electric thrill right down to his toes.

“Tell me what you want?” Phil asks when they pull apart again, because they’ve spent so long pretending they don’t want anything and Phil knows that there’s so much there, just waiting to be let out and he still can’t stop smiling and Clint links his hands behind Phil’s back, holding him close, his mouth also curving upwards in the best smile Phil has ever seen.

Clint’s eyes flick towards the bedroom, and he bites his lip before leaning forward just enough to touch Phil’s forehead with his own. “I was thinking we could—”

“Yes,” Phil cuts him off. They get caught up in a series of kisses, long, drugging kisses that leave Phil feeling strung out and needy, reaching for more as soon as there’s enough breath in his body. Clint’s lips are like magnets that pull him in again and again until they are braced against the nearest wall breathless, Phil’s shirt unbuttoned but still tucked into his jeans, gaping open wide enough for Clint’s (now) shirtless chest to press into it.

It’s rough and desperate and yet still so achingly slow. There’s a thigh between Phil’s legs giving him the perfect hard ridge of muscle to roll his aching cock against in careful, even thrusts, Clint swallowing down each noise he makes as it happens and then making his own as Phil’s leg offers him the same relief.

Still, they smile, just so damn happy there are no words at all that could contain the emotion. “Clint,” Phil whispers as Clint makes a his way down Phil’s throat, kissing each patch of skin, his hands skimming ahead of him, moving clothing out of the way and suddenly Phil’s shirt is untucked and his belt is getting undone and a shudder runs through his body because fuck yes. “Clint,” he rasps again, fingers running through Clint’s short hair as Clint’s tongue runs around his belly button before sucking hard and sharp just above his hip bone making Phil’s head knock back into the wall in pleasant shock.

Clint gets as far as the button on Phil’s fly when both of their phones ring. Simultaneously. “No,” Phil whispers, wanting for the first time in his life to be able to say ‘fuck it all’ and ignore the world. “No, no, no.” Below him, Clint has come to a stop, everything slumping in defeat for the length of one ring before he stands back up in one smooth, perfect, move until they are leaning against each other, breathing heavily.

The phones ring again and they both cling harder to each other, foreheads touching. “Shh.” Clint pulls him close and kisses his temple gently, one hand digging into his pocket for his phone. “I know, I know.”

Phil waits, eyes closed, soaking in the feeling of Clint’s body pressed into his, not just resting, but pressing eagerly. Skin touching skin.

“Shit,” Clint says, body already losing some more of its laxness. He twists so that he can give Phil a good look at the screen.

“Fuck,” Phil says when he sees the level 5 alert, letting go with one hand to dig his own phone out. His will have more information.

It’s hard to untangle and let go. In fact their hands reach for each other the second they can. Phil sneaks off to change in private because he needs ten seconds alone, to breathe, and more than that, he needs a damn suit — he won’t be able to compartmentalize without it. He does however leave the bedroom tieless to find Clint returning from the garbage run.

Phil feels strange, only relaxing once Clint is back in his orbit, close enough to touch if he wants, and how he wants. Instead, though, he threads his tie through his collar and turns to Clint in offering. Clint blinks but smiles, reaching out to help. It’s not the best tied knot in the world, but it’s Phil’s favorite. The last of the cleanup is taken care of quickly, but always within reach of each other, brushing against whatever body part is closest, reaching for hands and fingers whenever possible. When Phil drives them in, their fingers tangle over the gear shift, holding tightly the whole way there.

They have to part ways in the garage. Phil will have his own meetings to attend while Clint gets changed. “Wait,” Clint says, tugging Phil’s hand before it can release.

Phil lets go of the door handle and turns to look at Clint’s face, strangely shadowed in the garage lighting that makes it through the car windows. Clint’s eyes glow with unsaid words and he looks conflicted before shrugging it off and leaning in to give Phil a gentle kiss. Phil closes his eyes trying to take it all in, trying to soothe close to five years’ worth of doubt and jangled and upset nerves. Clint appears to be doing the same thing.

“I love you,” Clint whispers to him when they part enough for words. His lips are so close to Phil’s ear that he shivers at the warm breath. “I realized I loved you too much to pick my boyfriend over you and that’s why I broke up with him. It hurt to think of you leaving. It hurt to leave you alone like that, to watch you just— It hurt.”

Phil can’t do much else other than kiss him again, because there’s so much to be said, and if he starts now he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop. There’s work to be done. Still, he has to tell Clint one thing before he gets out of the car. “I love you too,” he says, and he’s never been more sure of something in his life.


	6. Chapter 6

Phil feels light, almost giddy, despite the fact that he’s had all of five minutes of Clint to himself, truly to himself, but they’ve managed to tell each other just enough that Phil is sure Clint is in this for the long haul. Maria gives him a curious look as he tries to stop his urge to whistle from manifesting and he gives her a sheepish smile in return.

The emergency turns out to be a splinter cell in North Korea that’s kidnapped a nuclear physicist and taken enough stolen supplies to make everything extra worrisome. What’s worse, though, are their backers: AIM. And it’s it out of character for them, too, which worries Phil more.

It’s a small strike team, including him, Sitwell, Clint, and Natasha, supported by nearly the whole of the organization. Clint is going in as a potential hire, Natasha as a potential buyer, and Phil as a potential lackey. He always does enjoy playing bland to Natasha’s exciting. They get a fresh set of pilots — protocol for emergency missions like this so that the team can have the flight time to prepare, or to sleep, as Phil is starting to realize he needs to do in order to do this right.

Clint settles next to him, legs splayed wide and taking up more space than he needs, but that means his thigh is pressing gently into Phil’s and Clint’s gaze is peering at him from the corner of his eye, worried and full of concern. “I’ll wake you in two?” Clint asks easily, like they were already having this conversation.

Phil considers his options, but the truth is, Clint is right, he needs honest to God rest and now that he knows Clint will be there when he wakes, will always be there if he can — and Phil suddenly knows this somewhere bone deep inside of him, that Clint will always be there if he can — sleep isn’t such a scary idea anymore. “Make it three,” he says, already yawning. “It’ll take them that long to finish the analysis.”

“Deal,” Clint says softly, leg bouncing so that it’s rubbing Phil’s pants.

Phil falls asleep to the hypnotic rhythm of Clint’s manic energy.

They figure out AIM’s reasons as soon as Clint gets his eyes on the fissionable material. It’s not your run-of-the-mill plutonium, but it’s the base component of gamma rays. At least, after it’s been run through a few machines, the same stuff needed to make a bomb. It’s also dangerous as hell. No wonder AIM farmed it out.

Clint gets in on day one. He perfected his muscle for hire persona years ago. It takes them three days to get Natasha in as a potential buyer for a different product. No need to get their targets too paranoid. They only need an in, and she can move the conversation in the right direction from there. Natasha starts asking questions, and as always, she’s phenomenal, and the seller in his shiny suit acts impressed that such a pretty lady knows so much about surface to air missiles, let alone plutonium when the conversation finally meanders in that direction. Phil’s seen this scenario play out maybe a dozen times before — Natasha charms some fool into spilling all sorts of secrets and before they know it, they’re practically monologuing their evil plan. But they must have smelled a rat before the team even arrived, and as fast as Natasha can improvise, she’s just not prepared for one of the security people to lean close to Shiny Suit and tell him exactly who Clint and Natasha are.

It devolves quickly, and before Phil can get to the gun in his ankle holster, he’s been tackled to the ground and has a knee keeping him there. He does his best to free himself, but he’s trapped, and powerless to do anything but watch as Natasha and Clint get shot with tranquilizer darts and are hauled off somewhere, unconscious.

After a few hits to the face, Phil’s handcuffed to a pillar and left there, pretending to be unconscious, though the stinging pain does overcome his senses for a few long moments, so he’s as good as for a bit. They might know who Clint and Natasha are, but they don’t seem to have a clue about Phil. His cover is still intact. He’s never been happier to be a nobody. His face, on the other hand, might be cracked. It throbs weakly as he moves around.

“Any idea where they went?” Phil asks the empty room once he’s certain no one’s there but the people in his ear.

“Working on it,” says Sitwell. “You alright?”

The pillar is kind of inconvenient, but Phil’s already got the pin out of his watch and is working on the cuffs as they speak. “I’ll be fine,” he replies and the bites off a hiss that enunciating the fricatives incites.

His hands are free with barely any effort, but as he pulls away from the cool marble of the column, his face flushes hotter and he gently feels out the swelling and bruising. That’s going to hurt later. What they lacked in training they made up for in muscle. He creeps carefully to the door, but he’s apparently fooled them so well that there isn’t even a guard until the end of the hall. That means he can go through the room without needing to be completely quiet. In Phil’s experience, drawers hate being quiet.

It’s not a gold mine, but there is a knickknack that fits perfectly in his hands and will make his hits really hurt. He’s got his ankle holster, but it’s small and with limited ammunition and also, loud, and right now Phil wants the silence like he’s never wanted anything else.

Clint’s body had made a terrible sound as he fell down like a puppet with cut strings, an uncoordinated thud that makes Phil angry more than anything else. Before leaving, he pockets the handcuffs as well. those might come in handy too.

“Any progress, Sitwell?” Phil asks before heading out.

“Yeah,” Sitwell says in his ear, “and you’re not gonna like it.”

The trackers monitor vital signs and Clint’s are racing, with all sorts of things spiking too high. Phil closes his eyes. They went for Clint first, probably to attempt to soften Natasha up. They may know who they work for, but Phil would bet just about everything that these guys have no idea who they are. Actually no, Phil shakes his head and adds in both the regional and organizational culture, it’s very possible they know who the Black Widow is, they just might not believe the press. Considering her reputation, the fact that they almost never believe the press is something that Phil feels is indicative of an organization doomed to failure.

“You’re going to need to find the sub-basement,” Sitwell tells him as he gets ready to leave.

“Don’t I always?” Phil asks, not expecting an answer. It’s always the dampest, darkest, hardest to reach, underground lair. SHIELD doesn’t get called in for anything less than a lair. That should be in the recruitment literature.

“Backup is at least 20 out,” Sitwell says as Phil starts evaluating his possibilities. “We didn’t expect Delta to be made that fast.”

“We never do,” Phil says, not really blaming the backup, “I’d wait, but we were made.” He shuts his eyes tightly, fighting the lingering distraction of getting his bell well and truly rung. Phil forces himself to switch gears fully into planning an extraction on the fly. “They knew us,” he tells Sitwell, “and that makes this a faster ticking clock than I’d like.”

The guard at the end of the hall never sees him coming. Phil puts him out with a sleeper hold and drags him off to a hidden corner before moving on. Luckily there’s a keycard Phil can squirrel away. He’ll take the stairs instead of risking enclosing himself inside a moving metal box with cameras and a computer that can probably be remotely controlled. He saw the card reader on the way in. The stairs should work out well.

The ‘public floors’ are easy. He snaps the guard’s stolen badge on and makes an effort to look like he’s supposed to be there. Once he’s in the stairs, though, that’s another matter. An alert security guard watching the feed might notice the discrepancy between the ID on the card reader entry and the person in the stairwell. There’s also the matter of Phil skipping all the floors the cardholder would logically stop at. His only real, immediate problem is getting the door open on the other end.

A scream comes through the thick door, muffled and distorted, but Phil knows it’s them. It’s too faint to tell which of them it is — the door is thick and heavy, pulling out any identifying factors of the voice. Phil examines the card reader and goes through his options. He’d prefer it to be a quiet infiltration for as long as possible, but like he told Sitwell, they know who they are, which ups the timetable a lot.

His best options involve drawing some attention to him or _all_ attention to him and he likes neither choice, but if he hangs around much longer someone on the cameras is going to get curious so he takes a deep breath and knocks on the door loud enough that the guard that he really, really hopes in the other side will hear. The panel blinks and goes green and Phil tenses.

It’s a solid 15 seconds of grappling. Phil has surprise on his side, but the goon is basically a wall of muscle. The heavy knickknack he snagged from the desk comes in handy because Phil is having trouble getting enough space to create enough force for his punches to do much good all on their own. Still, it takes far longer and far more hits than he’d like to get the guard to go down. By the time that happens, he’s got incoming from down the hall. It’s a difficult and long few minutes as he slowly picks off his attackers. The hallway is narrow and creates almost a natural choke point and it’s his only outside help.

Halfway down, past a few doors that he does manage to get a look at and decide that’s not where they’re being kept, he knows he’s found the right place. He hears them before he sees them, a broken sounding sob that can only be Clint followed by a sickening thud, and Natasha, whimpering. Phil briefly wonders what his own vitals are doing as he works his way down the dimly lit service corridor, taking at least one hit for every two of his that land.

He knows Natasha isn’t really whimpering, that it’s all part of the game, and intellectually he knows that Clint’s probably playing up the noises he’s making too, but still. He doesn’t want either of them to be in pain, fake or real. There’s another moan from Clint and a voice, apparently talking to Natasha.

“You talk, we stop.”

“Fuck you,” says Clint’s voice, followed by another hit and a moan mixed in with a spitting noise.

Despite the fact that he’s spent a good handful of minutes fighting his way in, there’s not actually a lot of hired hands hanging around — seems like AIM might be having a recruitment crisis, or maybe the prospect of working with dangerous nuclear material cut down on the applicants. It’d be hilarious if the science of nuclear bombs has made making them illegally more difficult because the poor press and dangerous realities led to a sheer lack of manpower.

Phil wishes he could radio out for an update on how Clint and Natasha are doing, but they’re too far below ground for even SHIELD’s radio frequencies. Their trackers and vital statistics run on a different frequency, it doesn’t require a constant signal, so they can work through much more interference.

Phil keeps going towards the sounds, unhappy to note the number of voices coming from the room. Natasha starts saying something that Phil can’t make out, and surely they’re behind the next door, they have to be. Phil will start to worry that one of the knocks to his head might’ve distorted something important if they aren’t there.

“Please don’t hurt him,” Phil makes out. “Please.”

There’s a sound from behind him. Phil gets his arm up in time to block, but the blow reverberates through his whole body and he hisses. The guy nailed an already forming bruise from the last guy and the pain is all-encompassing for too many long seconds. This guard is a bit tougher than the ones from earlier, and Phil tries to keep the noise from the scuffle down. It both helps and hinders him to be able to be able to hide their noise under Clint’s… interrogation.

Phil finally gets the upper hand. The guy might be strong and built like an ox, but he’s relied too much on brute force and has no stamina. Phil may be a little run down, but he’s not been having trouble sleeping for more than a couple months and he’s still managed to keep up more than the minimum amount of exercises, so he’s definitely got more energy waiting in the wings than this guy, even with the earlier fights. The adrenaline is still flooding his system and while it might be a problem if he lets himself cool off for too long, for now he’s still good to go, only breathing a little hard.

He finally gets the guy on his knees and in a position that keeps his center of gravity from helping him at all, just about to sleeper him down when Clint’s voice _screams_ and Phil knows on a gut level, that one wasn’t faked at all.

It ought to be scarier: how Phil just switches — he’s seen other agents switch from Garden Variety Agent to Deadly Assassin before now but never experienced it himself. Suddenly all Phil can focus on is getting in that room and getting his agents out of it. He squeezes harder than he needs to, and maybe the guy won’t wake up, but Phil doesn’t care — doesn’t even need to think about it. The guy is (was) an obstacle in his way and now he isn’t, that’s all there is to it.

Phil feels for anything useful on the guy, finds a keycard which says ‘Level 3’ on it, which Phil can only assume means it won’t open the door to the interrogation room, but no matter. There is a plan now, crystallizing piece by piece as Phil stalks ever closer to the room.

He’s dimly aware of the sounds Clint’s making, knows that Natasha has gone silent too, and there’s most likely a plan of their own that they’re figuring out on the fly like always, but that’s just background information. Phil creeps silently to the next door along and tries the card. It makes the reader flash red and bleep at him. Good.

He runs the card through again. More red. Come on, wrong entry alarms are practically part of the basic package these days and if he’s still for much longer his body’s gonna start to hit resting rates. He runs the card again. Again. Clint screams and Phil wonders if he’s got enough adrenaline to just punch through the steel plated doors. That’s about how out of his mind he is. He runs the card again.

Alarms blare.

Finally.

He tenses, waiting for running footsteps, but Phil has spent the last several minutes incapacitating anyone nearby. If anyone is coming, they’re either inside that room or very far away.

The door clicks open and Phil has his shoulder shoving into it with his entire body weight. There’s a grunt of surprise and then loud crashing from inside the room. Natasha and Clint were ready for something like this. He forces his way inside and finds Natasha already standing, remnants of a broken chair surrounding her, two splintered, wooden arms hanging from her own via a pair of handcuffs. As Phil suspected, they’d underestimated her.

Clint is still chained to his chair, which appears to be bolted down. He’s got enough leverage for a solid head butt though, if the state of the guy clutching his stomach is anything to go by.

If the rest of the building had occasionally been disturbingly empty, this room is disturbingly full. It’s large, divided in half by stainless steel. On one side it gleams like a butcher’s shop; on the other it gleams with excess. Hardwood floors, expensive carpets and paintings, plush looking chairs, it’s basically torture theater. What’s worse is those chairs look really nice right about now. Phil’s aches are starting to make themselves known and his energy levels are fading. Full-out hand-to-hand is draining, and he needs another shot of adrenaline soon or he’ll be out for the count.

The darkening splotches of red surrounding Clint’s chair are a good start.

Clint looks up at him blearily and grins with blood on his teeth. “You’re okay,” he says dreamily.

Phil nods, because even if he doesn’t feel it, he can be okay for Clint. Phil goes around the back of the chair to see what he can do about the restraints, but there’s the swift sound of Natasha doing a flying kick right behind him, and oh, right, there are other things to deal with.

Phil gets in a brief squeeze of Clint’s shoulder before he has to duck the meaty fist of yet another henchman — the room holds at least four, plus a handful of people who are either audience, upper-level command, or interrogator or some combination of the three. He comes up out of the duck with his own fist and neatly cracks the guy on the chin. He feels the way his bones compact upon impact — the guy’s skull must be made out of concrete — but it won’t hurt until later. He’s gonna be in all sorts of pain later.

Natasha’s busy getting choked out by another goon, struggling enough to throw him off balance and then flip him over her head. Phil shakes out his hand because he’s kinda struggling to make a fist at this point, and knocks the super-jawed guy over the head with the butt of his gun. That helps, and when Natasha knees him in the groin, Phil gets a few more hits in, and down the guy goes. Not before flailing out and knocking Phil onto his ass, though.

There’s a dash of luck when Phil spots a ring of keys laying discarded on the floor. They look like the right size and shape for the things holding Clint down. If he can get even just one of Clint’s hands free, they’ll be in a better position all around. One free hand will allow Clint to do all sorts of things, from unlocking his own chains to throwing anything and everything he can get his hands on to help Phil and Natasha take down the rest of the goons. Well, mostly goons; one or two of them look like their pay-grade is a tad higher than goon.

Phil wishes they were in a position to take one of them with them as they leave; he’s got questions he’d like to ask them.

Thankfully, there are only four keys he needs to try and Clint’s left hand pops free on the second key. Phil squeezes Clint’s fingers, pushes the key into his hand and then turns, ducking the guy who Natasha isn’t beating the crap out of.

His sore hand lands another bone-jarring punch. This one sends a bolt of pain all the way up to his elbow, and Phil knows he’s going to be stuck hunting and pecking on his keyboard for a few days after that one. He switches gears, grabbing one of the legs from Natasha’s shattered chair. It’ll still hurt, but hopefully the extra material and length will help distribute the force a bit more.

There’s an old-fashioned rotary phone on a desk, and Phil thinks if he can just get to it and dial out for help, they’ll have SHIELD agents swarming the place in seconds. It’s a little bit of a pipe dream because its barely been the twenty minutes since he spoke to Sitwell, but an update would be really marvelous. They’re too far underground for most their own tech to work, but the phone feels like an important lifeline to Phil.

Still, even with Clint rolling his shoulders and rubbing his wrists, and Natasha doing her terrifying thing, there’s a lot of these great big WWE rejects to get through. Even with the three of them and the obvious lack of coordination between the beefy guards, it’d be a stretch. Clint’s leg seems to be hurt, and Phil wants to help him out but there’s not much he can do when he’s mid way through doing some of his best judo moves on Henchman No 4.

“The phone!” Phil says, choking out his current dance partner with his chair leg. He narrowly avoids getting dropped to the floor with the guy’s weight falling on him, sidestepping neatly and helping unbalance Clint’s current opponent. Even when all three of them are off their game, they still make a great team, even if most of it is improvisation and just plain luck.

Natasha helps Clint with the next guy, and there only seems to be about 500 pounds of giant men left. The guy who had the air of upper echelon ran at the first sight of trouble, and Phil hopes with all his heart he slams right into the swarm of SHIELD agents coming in. Natasha got the interrogator and audience early on; they’re all slumped in one direction or another on the floor. Phil swings his trusty chair leg around on his way to the phone, stepping over a couple of unconscious people, only to pick it up and find there’s no dial tone. He sags momentarily, jiggling the button a few times, hoping for a dial-tone, brain calibrating and trying to work out how they can disguise themselves as really small henchmen, or stand on top of each other’s shoulders like a cartoon or something, when he hears a sound.

Everyone in the room turns slowly to watch as the fireplace slides away, revealing what looks like a secret passage. Of course they have a secret passage. There’s _always_ a secret passage. Always.

Clint snorts out a bit of laughter, while ducking a punch. It’s possible Phil spoke that last bit out loud. Also, Phil has large doubts about an organization that leaves such a simple switch inside a room where the captive spends any amount of time. Natasha and Clint are finishing up their current tasks and just as they start their full out run, Phil tugs the phone, pulling the wires out of the wall, hoping that’s enough to keep anyone left from using the mechanism after they’re gone.

Phil is the last one through the opening, Clint is standing next to the doorway and slaps a switch as soon as Phil crosses the threshold. The door slams in the face of the one goon still able to stand and they all breathe a sigh of relief.

Phil smashes the phone into the ground, grinding a few bits beneath his heel for good measure. Also because it feels good.

“Okay there sir?” Clint asks, words slurring slightly.

“Never better,” Phil says with faux brightness.

“Any idea where this leads?” Natasha asks, striding off down the passage. It seems to be some kind of service tunnel, More grungy and poorly lit than the corridor he came down originally, which is saying something. The whole area is dimly lit by industrial bulbs set into the walls, exposed wiring running the length of the thing and a perpetual feeling of damp in the air. There are no doors that Phil can see, just the tunnel they’re in stretching off ahead of them before either a dead end or a turn off, Phil can’t tell.

Phil huffs out a breath and digs deep trying to come up with anything, but the throbbing is starting to interfere with some of his higher cognitive abilities. “Nothing,” Phil admits, running a finger along the wall as he follows behind. He looks at the grime on his finger and says, “bleurgh.” What possessed him to _touch_ it.

“Y’alright there, sir?” Clint asks again, laughing.

“I’m great. This is a perfect first date.” Phil mutters, completely distracted and also apparently just a bit punchy.

“Please,” Natasha says, her smirk easily visible even in the dimly lit corridor, “even I know this isn’t your first date.”

Clint chokes on a laugh, knocking into Phil’s side. With unerring accuracy, Clint brushes against a freshly blooming bruise on his ribs and anything he might have said gets lost in a hiss of pain.

“Sir?” Clint asks, fingers brushing back against the spot and then lifting away bits of Phil’s clothes so Clint can examine him.

“I’m not bleeding,” Phil says, “those guys were just very large.” They pass directly under one of the poorly lit bulbs and the swelling in Clint’s fingers becomes easily apparent. “Concentrate on yourself,” Phil says and makes his feet continue to move, one in front of the other, when all he wants to do is sit Clint down and examine every inch of him for injury. He knows he’s not going to like the report when it finally comes in.

Clint actually keeps his mouth shut. Either he’s more injured than Phil wants to think about or Phil looks worse than he feels, which is pretty impressive all on its own. He feels like a slowly deflating balloon, whose skin is wrinkled and abused.

A burst of static hits his ear.

“...Coul… do you… signal back… lson?”

“Sitwell?!” Phil cries, putting his hand to his ear and wincing, because both his hand and his ear hurt a lot, and he’d almost forgotten for a second. “We must be heading uphill. We need to keep going, get to higher ground and a better signal.” Phil says, both to his companions and to whoever it is on the line. It sounded like Sitwell, anyway.

They keep going, the signal getting steadily stronger until Phil’s actually able to make himself understood. A map has been found and it puts them right beneath where the rest of the Agents are, apparently. They triangulate and manage to pinpoint exactly where they are and where the exit lies — another fifteen minutes’ walk underground before they pop out on the other side of the compound, under a library, of all places.

“I’ve been meaning to return some books,” Phil says mildly, making mental promises to each of his feet in turn if they’ll just keep moving. He moves onto his legs and individual ribs after because his feet are actually not the problem, it’s getting them to move that is. Natasha takes over comms, since even with a rather lurid bruise forming on her forehead, she’s able to concentrate better than Clint or Phil.

“I’m fine,” Phil says when Clint winds an arm around him and takes some of his weight. His entire body may feel weighed down with fatigue, but he can still do his job. “S’okay. I’m okay.”

“Phil, you keep promising yourself hand-made shoes,” Clint says, the hidden mirth inside it kind of soothing.

“Am not,” Phil absolutely does not sulk. His adrenaline is dropping out and he could fall asleep right now, if he stood still long enough and just let Clint be his usual special self. Instead, because he is a Goddamned Agent of SHIELD and he will not fall asleep before he is at least outside of the perimeter, he jams his hand into his side, the two bruises throb sharply simultaneously and jolt him back towards consciousness rather than a zombie-like shuffle.

Clint tsks from beside him. “You yell at me when I do that,” he says softly.

“I can’t count on you to do it only when you need to,” Phil answers back, already planning their next few hours. “You didn’t need to get back up during that mission in Caracas, or China, or most of the Baltic nations.”

“Toe- may-toe, toe-mah-toe,” Clint sing-songs quietly.

Phil stifles an actual giggle. The adrenaline is helping, but his body is just about stretched to the limit. The long period of poor sleep wasn’t helpful, but in the end its effects were relatively minor. What really knocked Phil off his block was the hand-to-hand. Movies like to pretend that stuff doesn’t take a helluva lot of stamina, but it does. Clint probably has more energy than he does. Phil’s running start into the fray means he was going hard for nearly ten minutes before he even made it to the room. Clint and Natasha fall asleep the second its safe when they have to fight their way in and out on a rescue op. If they’ve been captured and only had to fight in one direction, then they’ll usually stay up on the transport home and write their preliminary reports unless their injuries received during captivity take precedence. No one begrudges any agent who engaged in prolonged close-quarters combat their nap time except Agents and others who’ve never tried it.

Now that he’s slowed down, Phil can tell there are more injuries than he’d originally accounted for. For a minute he’s got some sympathy for that bewildered face Clint sometimes gets during the first accounting in medical. Phil doesn’t often take this much damage anymore, and he’s forgotten what it can be like.

The door on the far side opens with a sudden noise and all three of them whirl into fighting position, only to relax when Sitwell’s worried face pops through. “Finally!”

Phil doesn’t faint — he’s never fainted, ok — but he might admit to a sudden dip in blood pressure because he does suddenly have both of Clint’s arms holding him upright. His feet are done with working together and coordinating his hips, knees, and ankles seems beyond him, but it’s okay, because there’s sunlight and medical personnel and, oh, a stretcher. If the stretchers have made it in, Sitwell has managed to secure at least three quarters of the compound by now.

He kinda passes out for a bit, and just as he’s closing his eyes, Phil thinks ‘this is going to ruin my street cred.’

He wakes up in a helicopter strapped to a gurney, panics for a second because he thinks he’s been kidnapped again, but there’s one of the medics Phil’s familiar with from base looking down on him, and that’s a good sign, so he stops trying to struggle. Not that he was going anywhere.

“You’ve fractured your wrist,” the medic says, and because Phil’s an idiot, he instinctively moves his hand just to test it out. Yep, feels bad. “And you’ve been knocked around a lot. Anywhere that hurts particularly?”

“Everywhere,” Phil answers honestly, and then he laughs, because his brain can’t even process things right now. In some universe, him being a human-sized bruise is hilarious, so why not this one?

“Try and stay awake for me, hmm?” the medic says, and Phil just keeps laughing.

“What’s so funny?” says a voice to the other side, and Phil tries to roll over to see who it is. Well, he moves his eyes, at least.

“Please don’t try to move,” another medic says from somewhere, but then Clint’s face hovers into view.

Phil grins. “You,” he says.

Clint smiles and it’s his usual post mission, oh look there are pain killers in my system now, goofy smile, but Phil imagines he sees something more in it, something soft and meaningful. Phil tries to convey that back. He’s pretty sure he succeeds because Clint’s eyes seem to sparkle with a little something extra after he catches Phil’s gaze.

Then again, that could be the needle going into his IV, which he doesn’t even remember getting.

Phil falls asleep sometime between one rotor blade and another, with Clint’s quiet commentary in his ear. He wakes up God knows how many hours later, in medical, feeling like a giant bruise, only worse, with Clint passed out heavily one bed over. It’s still the most welcome sight in the world.


	7. Chapter 7

They run him through dozens of tests, so many that Phil might even have started grumbling if Clint wasn’t one bed away. Phil’d never hear the end of it if he did. When he’s been patched up with a few bandages, a soft cast for his arm and wrist, and admonitions about his head, and given a little bag full of drugs, he’s allowed to leave, but he sticks around until Clint’s ready too. There’s a bit of squabbling about the two of them signing each other out since they’re both injured, but Phil starts getting all Level 7 on them, which is no mean feat in the gray tracksuit they’ve put him in, and they’re allowed to leave.

“Every five hours,” Phil reads from Clint’s little bag filled with pills and a tube of that amazing topical stuff that will allow them both to chew food with their bruised and broken faces. “Me too.”

Clint smiles shyly, or at least Phil thinks it’s shy — it’s kind of hard to tell with the black eye.

Part of the agreement that allows their release from medical is that they won’t try to drive themselves anywhere for a few days. Phil, despite his drugged-out nap, is fine with that. He’s not sure he wants to try much of anything with his soft cast encased wrist and his torso bruising, and Clint’s swollen fingers alone, dislocation of at least three, are a good argument against him getting anywhere near a steering wheel. So they grab a junior agent from the motor pool and quietly shuffle into the back seat like good little agents.

Once they’ve settled, with nothing else pressing, it’s hard to maintain professional distance. Clint gives him another shy, but bruised looking, smile and deliberately puts his hands in his lap, silently showing Phil he wants the same things. So Phil does what he does best: he improvises by digging out his phone, pulling up the delivery app, and then leaning into Clint’s side under the auspices of giving him a good look at the screen.

They spend the thirty-minute drive shoulders pressed companionably together, quietly negotiating their delivery order. Phil hits send just as the car turns onto his block. The time of day only hits him as they stumble and limp their way to the elevator. Phil usually tries to come in at odd hours if there’s an injury that’s a bit too obvious. Neighbors can get too nosy if you’re too unusual.

“Car accident,” Phil says quietly to the staring people in the elevator car. Their eyes round in understanding and then finally slide away from them. Clint knocks their elbows together and despite the dull ache that inspires, it’s a welcome touch.

As soon as they are on the other side of Phil’s door, any restraint there might have been vanishes and suddenly they are in each other’s arms, hugging carefully, mindful of injuries but really not caring all that much because they can finally touch again, for the first time in some ways and it’s absolutely perfect.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says when Clint makes a sound of pain. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. I—”

Clint leans back so he can look at Phil’s face, and he’s smiling, beautiful despite the bruises. “Shh,” he says before leaning in and kissing Phil carefully. Phil gets scared for a second that this is a dream and he’ll wake up from it at any moment, and he clings harder despite their injuries.

Clint’s sharp intake of breath makes Phil stop, letting him go like he’s burned him. Clint’s reaching for him again when Phil steps back, but he’s only going far enough to tug at Clint’s shirt, get a look for himself at the injuries he’s dealing with. ”Let me see?” he says, lifting Clint’s shirt. “I need to see.” The urge burns through him even as he knows that it’s not going to make him feel any better. He still needs to see.

“Easy tiger,” Clint laughs, and Phil’s seen Clint Barton bruised up and bandaged before but he’s never seen him this… joyful. “Not exactly looking my best right now.”

Phil almost apologizes again, because God, he blames himself. Even though he can’t figure what he might have done differently, he still hears Clint hiss in pain and automatically feels guilt. Clint takes his shirt off with his good hand and he doesn’t have the wherewithal to speak. He’s torn between Clint’s perfect body and the marks on it. He reaches out to touch. He stops himself though, because he’s stuck between not wanting to hurt Clint and having no idea where to start, because _damn_.

“You gonna kiss me better?” Clint asks, hesitant smile playing on his lips.

Phil smiles slowly, because yeah, that sounds perfect. “Every single inch,” Phil says reverently, finally reaching out to touch, less inhibited this time, but keeping it feather light nonetheless. He wants it to be slow, to be drawn out, to take forever, because God, it’s felt like forever since he’s had this, since he thought he’d ever get this. Clint’s muscles jump and quiver under his fingertips and Phil’s eyes dart back and forth between the landscape his hands are mapping and Clint’s face. Sometimes it’s pain, sometimes not. Phil traces the edges of a bruise and Clint sucks in a breath and lets out shocked sounding moan.

Phil snatches his hands away but Clint is already shaking his head. “Feels good, sensitive,” he husks, licking his lips.

Phil has to close his eyes as a shiver runs through his body. Clint’s hands unzip the hoodie medical had given him and slides it off Phil’s shoulders to land at their feet. The next thing he’s aware of is Clint’s hot hands searing through the thin cotton of his shirt, just touching, pressing, but not moving, not really, except maybe the thumbs, which rub circles into his skin through the material.

Clint pulls them together, resting their bodies against one another in a way that feels intimate and special, his hands holding Phil close, their faces touching at the temples, and the happy sigh that gusts out of Clint’s mouth tickles his ear. “I can’t believe we’re both here,” Phil whispers, a little painfully, but still happy.

Clint nods, humming. “I was scared,” he says in the same low voice and at first Phil thinks he’s talking about the mission but Clint goes on. “You looked so— you scared me Phil.”

Phil’s eyes clench closed, Clint is talking about before they got beat to all to hell and he’s not the only one who was scared, Phil had scared himself. He knows they have so much to talk about and God, he’s never looked forward to a relationship conversation more in his life but he’s barely got the energy to eat, let alone have intense conversations. Still. Phil can plan. “I’m sorry,” he says first, because it feels like there’s so much to be sorry for even if neither of them did anything wrong.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Clint says even as Phil thinks it. “Just be here with me.”

“I plan to,” Phil says. “Let’s change for bed, and bring whatever we might need for the next few days into the bedroom? That way we’ll only have to stumble to the bathroom and back for a while. Maybe to the kitchen to warm up leftovers.”

Clint leans back and cups Phil’s face gently, so gently, and smiles. “That is the best plan I have ever heard in my entire life,” he says and then leans in to kiss Phil’s nose which just makes them both laugh.

Once in the bedroom, they clumsily undress one another, as much because of their own injuries as because they want to get their hands on one another’s skin. Phil lets himself run his fingers down Clint’s less injured side, all the way down his hip, but stops before he moves on to a more provocative area. They’re a little bit of a ticking time bomb, injuries aside, Phil is worried they might say ‘fuck it all’ and try something that will only strain something and probably embarrass the delivery guy when they answer the door. That doesn’t stop them from getting distracted every so often in the other’s body.

Clint’s fingers brush down Phil’s back so many times Phil’s entire spine feels charged with sensation. There’s a brush of lips against his neck and they have to pause just to feel each other again. Clint closes the distance and presses his shirtless chest against the oversensitive skin on Phil’s back. Phil hums in appreciation. “You feel so good,” he whispers, letting his head roll back onto Clint’s shoulder, finding a perfect hollow to settle in under Clint’s jaw. He gets a kiss on the temple for his effort.

Phil is so comfortable he’s in danger of falling asleep right there. Clint’s contented sighs are probably an indicator that he feels the same way. “Come on,” Phil eventually says, making himself pull away, “we’ll be much happier once we’re done.” He uses his now bare feet to pull out the bottom right drawer of the dresser in front of them.

Clint’s clothes are still neatly folded inside the drawer Phil had cleaned out for him years ago. They haven’t been touched in a while, but they’re still there, waiting. Clint smiles at him again, that same shy smile that makes Phil’s insides feel warm and pleasant and carefully gets down to the floor, sitting with crossed legs and just opens his bag and unloads several more changes of clothes into it, filling the drawer almost to capacity. It makes Phil’s cheeks hurt, well, no, that might also have something to do with the suborbital fracture, but something about the image still feels indefinably good.

They’re both moving slowly, so by the time they’ve changed, shyly but in front of one another, getting in quick touches and a handful of kisses, brought their laptops, some DVDs, the large medical kit Phil keeps in the bathroom, their meds, water, Gatorade, non-refrigerated snacks, heating pads, etc, into the bedroom, the doorbell rings.

Phil answers because his face bruising looks a little less intimidating. Though, based on the delivery guy’s face, not by much. He pays and just brings all of it right into the bedroom where Clint is still organizing everything for maximum laziness.

“I’m still surprised you didn’t insist on pizza,” Phil says, unpacking the cartons onto the small lap desk at the foot of the bed.

Clint smiles, hands tangling with Phil’s as he helps unpack it all, “Thought about it,” he says, “but considering the states of our faces, I went for something that was soft and stayed soft.”

Good point, because already the amount of smiling Phil is doing has left him with a near permanent ache under his right eye. The climb into bed together doesn’t feel momentous, though Phil thinks it should. They slip under the covers, the way they always have — they even have sides of the bed, and how has Phil never noticed that before?

There’s a brief moment of awkwardness before Clint ducks his head and mumbles, “C’mere,” before gathering Phil to his side. It nearly turns into a Laurel and Hardy routine when they both land on sore spots and spring apart and then almost elbow one another in delicate places, but a judicious application of pillows, some stolen from the living room, helps prop them up and cushion the worst of the injuries and lets them curl into each other comfortably.

Phil keeps getting distracted between bites, staring at Clint’s jaw as it moves, or his eyes as they crinkle, or his hands as they move the chopsticks (in that case clumsily — there’s damage to both sets of fingers — but it’s still all so captivating).

“What?” Clint asks between mouthfuls when he notices Phil’s distraction.

“Nothing,” Phil says softly, distracted still. “Just— having trouble believing this isn’t a concussion-based hallucination.”

Clint swallows his most recent bite, puts his food down and twists his body so they’re slightly closer to face to face, and then takes Phil’s face carefully into his hands and cradles it. “There’s so much I want to say,” Clint tells him.

Phil’s eyes close automatically at Clint’s first touch, but he forces them open again. “We spent so much time not talking,” he says, voice a little thready. “It all seems so dumb now, looking back, but at the time, it felt like the only thing I could do.”

They kiss, and it starts soft and slow, like all the others, but it moves past that when one of them whimpers and the other one swallows the noise. Phil needs to see Clint again with a suddenness that takes his breath away. He’s already digging under the blankets to get at the edges of Clint’s shirt while Clint’s lips open and he licks into Phil’s mouth with a moan.

There’s rustling at the edge of Phil’s hearing and he remembers the food. “Wait,” he gasps, “the food, move the—” Clint sucks on his jaw, probably on the one unbruised spot left and it distracts Phil briefly. “The food,” he says again when Clint backs off, looking dazed.

They blink at each other dumbly until they both laugh at their own antics. Phil removes the food while Clint removes his shirt, and then he selflessly helps Phil off with his own. The bruises catch Phil’s eyes first, but they’re kissing again pretty quickly and Clint’s tongue would distract a saint and Phil has spent a very long time not thinking about any of this. They shuffle and shimmy and eventually they manage to get horizontal and Clint’s bare chest is touching Phil’s and it all feels so good. Clint must agree because he arches into it, only to stop suddenly and hiss.

Phil freezes and drags his lips away, “What’s wrong?”

Clint shakes his head. “Nothing, just have to be careful.” He leans in for Phil again and Phil tucks away the bad position for future reference.

They get another long few minutes of quiet making out, with the occasional long stroke down mottled skin before Phil hisses in pain as Clint’s head tilts wrong and kisses his fractured cheekbone.

“The universe hates us,” Phil says, hands still touching Clint’s skin, skimming past the too-hot patches, letting his fingers catch on the elastic holding his pants up. “It’s mocking us for how long this took,” he says wryly, happiness still leaking through every pore of his body.

“If it makes you feel better,” Clint says, cupping Phil’s less hurt cheek, “my original idea, before we were paged,” he stops and tilts his head, eyes sparkling, “before you jumped me, was to get you into bed and then make you nap.”

Phil actually shudders in pleasure at the idea, only mildly embarrassed about the description of his behavior last time they were alone. A few quick, and sometimes medicated, naps aside, a full night’s sleep with Clint next to him, guaranteed to be there in the morning, sounds like heaven.

“We should maybe talk about that?” Clint asks tentatively, still stroking any available patch of Phil’s skin.

Phil sighs. Clint’s hands are distracting and it takes some effort for Phil to collect his thoughts. “I let it get out of control,” he admits, looking away. He’s not proud of the last several weeks, or even the months before that. “That was completely unprofessional. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“You can’t control how you sleep,” Clint says softly, relaxing into his pillow. It doesn’t actually take him too far away, because Phil’s head is also resting on Clint’s pillow, “and you were working it out, I could see that, it was just taking a while.”

Phil feels terrible about his plans now, knowing what he knows. He imagines walking into Clint’s space and finding secret plans to run away and he understands that look on Clint’s face now, the one he walked in on over a week ago. “I was going to tell you,” Phil explains. “I was never going to just leave.”

“I knew that,” Clint said, voice a little hollow, “I really did, but you were slipping away so fast that— it was a bit of a wake up call.” There are a few more light kisses, each of them a strange combination of gentle and needy, each one bringing Phil’s body into more contact with Clint’s until they’re touching from knee to chest and it’s a really good feeling. They pull back a bit with a lingering kiss. “At least now those circles under your eyes will start to go away,” Clint whispers before leaning in to kiss each one carefully, being extra gentle on the side of Phil’s swollen cheek, somehow making the kiss sensual but barely there all at once.

Phil sighs into the gentle touch, but shakes his head as Clint moves away. “I don’t need you here every night,” he says even as he finds his hands unable to leave Clint’s skin. “I’m a grown man, I don’t need you to be my security blanket.”

Clint stares at him for a long time. “Maybe I want to be here,” he eventually says, curling a hand around the back of Phil’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss, “maybe this is where I’ve always wanted to be.”

It’s hard to keep himself focused with the way Clint’s hands are wandering, stroking carefully, so it takes him a few seconds to realize what Clint said. “Always?”

“Well,” Clint blushes, his bruised cheek going a strange color, “maybe not _right_ from the beginning, but pretty close.”

Phil drops his head onto the pillow. “We’re morons,” he moans, absolutely mortified. “I’m ashamed of us.” He makes a show of banging his head, softly, against their shared pillow. “Seriously, we’re never telling anyone.”

Clint is laughing, reaching out to stop Phil’s slow death by pillow. “Hey now, I liked the friend stuff a lot, I really needed someone like that. Don’t get me wrong, Tasha is my Assassin Soulmate, but you and me, what we had in the beginning, it was as close to a normal friendship as I’d ever had.” Clint’s face has slowly slipped from amused to serious and he’s touching Phil’s face like it’s the most precious thing in the world.

“Me too,” Phil admits painfully, “it was— even when we started to—”

“Become codependent?” Clint asks, small smile on his face doing nothing to hide his more serious expression.

Phil huffs a quiet laugh. “Yes, that.” He leans in to give Clint a quick kiss, then another, and another. It’s been a fight to keep separate from Clint since they got back and suddenly, Phil is just tired of fighting. So he stops and the next kiss goes desperate and he swallows Clint’s surprised noise and then the pleased on that follows. It feels good to just let go, finally and touch and taste all he wants. Phil hands slide over whatever bit of Clint he can find, happy to let Clint do the same. It’s easy to get lost in the slip slide of tongues and skin but Phil wants more, so much more, so he slides a little, pressing them closer and working a leg betwe—

Clint hisses, his whole body stiffening. Phil freezes and eases back, but staying close enough to touch. “Sorry,” he says into the skin on Clint’s neck, gently kissing some of the only bruise-free skin on his upper body. He gets a little lost again and forgets the extra-warm skin on Clint’s jaw is a bruise. Clint sucks in a sharp breath when Phil’s teeth graze it.

“No, no,” he says, holding Phil close, “that was a good noise, just wasn’t expecting it there.”

Phil smiles and sucks gently at the skin, slowly memorizing the taste and feel of it on his tongue before moving back to less damaged areas, his neck, upper shoulders, and bits of his sternum. Clint’s hips start shifting flatteringly fast and Phil can feel the familiar hot brand of Clint’s cock as he rocks carefully into Phil’s thigh.

That’s when Phil laughs in Clint’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes when he finally calmed down, “it’s just— God look at us— we’re a mess and I was just thinking that your _erection_ pressing into my leg was _familiar_ and _comforting_ , God, what the hell is wrong with us?”

By then, Clint is laughing too, nodding along with Phil’s rant. “I was gonna be celibate for you,” Clint gets out between giggles, “I was ready to give up sex, I thought that morning erection was— I dunno! It never occurred to me!”

When they finally calm down, they’re both still more than a little hard and it takes a few tries to return to kissing without breaking off into giggles. Finally, Clint pushes his knee up and there’s a good place for Phil to rock against and it’s swiftly anything but funny. Phil’s entire body lights up and suddenly every touch turns 180 degrees and is electricity against his skin. “Clint,” he gasps and all he wants to do is climb on top or into or wherever as long as they’re pressing close together but he doesn’t dare try it.

“Look at you,” Clint murmurs, hands stroking lightly at Phil’s chest. “God, look at you.” Clint’s eyes are practically glowing and his voice is already rough from earlier. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to suck you right now, just roll you over and suck your cock till your toes curl and your eyes roll back into your head and then maybe later, let you take your time and open me up for what feels like hours before sliding in, perfect and hard inside me. The way I feel I’d probably come on the spot but I’d want you to keep going, fuck me through it and then fuck me some more, until I’m hard again and gasping and begging to come again.”

Clint paints a vivid picture and all Phil can do is keen and keep rocking against Clint’s cloth covered knee, feeling so good that it does actually make his toes curl.

“Wait,” Clint says just as Phil is about to compose an ode to Clint’s knee which at that moment is rubbing against his cock so perfectly, “I have an idea.” He rolls over and reaches for the drawer in the nightstand. It takes some fumbling because his fingers don’t want to bend but as soon as it’s open he rolls back, carefully, and presents Phil with his own half empty bottle of lube. It’s shoved in his hands and then Phil watches Clint shimmy out of his sleep pants and boxers before taking the lube back and then very carefully, stiff fingers making it a little awkward, spreading a large amount of it on the underside of the knee Phil had just been— engaged with.

Phil blinked.

“Come on! Off with the pants!” Clint motioned at him.

The picture coalesces. “Oh. You want me to... There?”

Clint smirks, winces at his facial bruising, and then smirks some more. “It’s the only place without a bruise on or nearby. Come on, you were having fun before.” At Phil’s hesitation, Clint’s smirk softens into something sweeter. “I want to make you feel good.”

The thing is, Phil’s going to feel like an absolute failure if they don’t actually do something. After five years, if there isn’t an orgasm the first chance they have, Phil might have to move to another planet because the entire thing is just ungodly ridiculous at this point.

Also, the knee is starting to look kind of appealing. Maybe that’s just a combination of Clint’s glittering eyes and his still throbbing erection. Phil hasn’t actually had sex in nearly two years. There’s no actual acknowledgment from Phil, but he does relax back down onto the mattress, still sharing a pillow with Clint who just curls into him, managing to find a comfortable position draped across Phil, positioning his bent leg at just the right spot.

“You’re not in pain?” Phil asks, greedy fingers tracing the contours in front of him, the fracture on his right hand could be miles away for all he could feel. Still, it’s an effort to resist squeezing the knee in front of him with it.

“A little,” Clint admits, “but nothing too distracting.” He adjusts a pillow behind him and then relaxes a bit more into Phil’s body. “I want to be with you tonight, Phil, in as many ways as possible. I feel like we need to get this part of our lives started or we’re just going to keep finding things that stop us.” Clint presses down on the bulge under his knee and rubs firmly, getting lube all over Phil’s pants, but it feels good and Phil no longer cares.

“Okay,” Phil nods breathlessly, “yes, give me a second and then, yes, absolutely.”

Clint smiles as wide as he can and presses a kiss onto Phil’s shoulder before giving him a few inches of room to work with. Phil’s own shimmy out of the rest of his clothes inspires a few aches and pains but that’s nothing compared to the blood pounding in his veins or the look Clint is giving him while he does it. Before he can settle back down, Clint’s hand reaches out. He doesn’t grab or hold or anything that requires bending fingers, but he still reaches out to skim past the new skin Phil has revealed. There’s the ghost of a touch against his cock, shocking and hot, before Clint moves on to Phil’s stomach and hips.

“Bruises,” Clint murmurs as Phil settles back down, “everything okay?” He kisses Phil’s shoulder again and curls back up as soon as Phil stops moving.

“Yeah,” Phil nods, suddenly nervous, beyond aware that they’re naked together, for the first time, “I’m good.”

Clint smiles and shifts his knee up, a hand reaching to— oh— heat and slick surround him and it’s all he can do to keep it to a single thrust. “So, that works?” Clint asks, nuzzling Phil’s skin.

“Yeah,” Phil says, voice shaky, “yeah it does.” He gives another experimental thrust and Clint clenches the muscles in his thigh and calf as Phil moves and holy fuck, that was really good. A warm brand of heat makes itself known against Phil’s hip and an idea bubbles up. “Gimme that,” he says breathlessly, motioning for the bottle of lube. “Okay, hold on,” he says and then slicks up Clint’s cock, enjoying the brief sensation of heated skin and Clint’s moaning before adding some slick to his own hip before closing the bottle up. Then Phil directs Clint closer, until Phil can rock his hips up into the tight, slick heat of the back of Clint’s knee while rubbing the underside of the cock resting in the V of his hip.

It shouldn’t work, it was an absolutely ridiculous position, but it didn’t seem to matter, because they were finally touching, the way they’d both wanted for too long and that seemed to be enough.

They devolve into sharp gasps and the slick push/pull of sex, well, sort of sex, quickly and it’s somehow the most intense experience Phil has ever had. He needs Clint closer because he feels unmoored and out of control. He works an arm under Clint’s head, so that Clint rests on the meaty part of the biceps and can pant hotly into Phil’s ear.

“Okay,” Clint says between wobbly rocks, “I admit, I didn’t expect this to work as well as it is.”

Phil laughs, turning his head to catch Clint in a kiss and they both laugh through it, still moving in what must be an amazing feat of coordination considering how much of their total bodies are injured. “I can’t believe we’re,” Clint tightens his muscles again and it makes Phil’s brain blank out for a few seconds, “we’re actually doing this. At all,” something is building, slow and deep, but Clint’s muscles are egging Phil on in the best of ways, against his hip, there’s a twitch, “let alone like this.”

They get lost in a slow, deep kiss that seems to never end and just gets better and better until finally they have to break apart for air. They’re both sweaty and Clint glows next to him with pleasure, with happiness and with love — Phil can see it now and he can’t believe how blind he’d been because it’s all right there on Clint’s face, in the way Clint would contort into whatever he needed to for Phil, even now, curled up around him, in the single position that could give them both pleasure.

“I love you,” Phil says, needs to say, because it’s bubbling up inside him, huge and immovable and he can’t contain it at all, he doesn’t want to.

“I love you too,” Clint says as he leans in to suck on Phil’s ear and let his more agile fingers scrape against Phil’s tight nipples.

“Oh.” Phil’s hips snap. “Oh fuck, Clint, oh fuck,” he babbles, dazed, as Clint continues to nip and twist and suck, until finally something breaks and Phil shivers through the pulses of a long orgasm, honey slow and sweet as it ripples through his body.

“That’s it,” Clint whispers, hoarse, hips rocking in time with Phil’s, “you’ve been waiting on that one a long time, huh?”

Phil nods without thinking, shuddering still. He bites his lip to avoid saying something sappy like, ‘my whole life.’ He’s still twitching, in a strange crossroads between overstimulation and utter relaxation when he shimmies out of Clint’s grip and slides down the bed far enough to suck the puffy head of Clint’s fat cock into his mouth. He tastes of lube and desperation. The endorphins have temporarily helped his cheek stop hurting and while Phil is terribly out of practice, Clint keens with need above his head and Phil thinks technique won’t really be an issue.

He uses his left, and unbroken, hand to hold Clint steady for the first cautious sucks and then strokes Clint strong and steady as his mouth stays near the tip, sucking and occasionally licking the slit carefully.

“Oh please,” Clint pants, “yes please, that’s so perfect, Phil, so perfect— you’re so perfect— oh God, oh God.” His cock goes harder and Phil gives it one last suck and pulls off when the slightly bitter taste of precome hits his tongue.

Clint’s entire being freezes and Phil keeps his hand moving, waiting, and then Clint sucks in a huge breath and his cock twitches and spills in four long pulses all over Clint’s stomach. Phil wants to lick it clean, but his face is already starting to throb again, despite the lingering muscle relaxation that a good orgasm gets him.

Phil crawls back up, suddenly very tired and wanting nothing more than to pull Clint close and pass out for an undetermined time. Next to him, Clint is still shivering, reaching for something to clean himself off. Looks like Clint got the bulk of it; most of Phil’s come is still painted across the underside of Clint’s knee.

They fall asleep pretty quickly. There’s an alarm at some point, where Phil blearily feeds them both their next handful of pills and they exchange gentle but clumsy ointment applications to their cheeks and ribs before they pass back out. The second alarm gets them up enough to pee and eat before taking their next doses and curling up for more sleep. With each hour of sleep with Clint nearby, it feels like Phil is slowly digging out from under piles of wet sand, stuff that not only dragged him down, but that made everything harder, forcing him to work with more energy for less results. They both sleep a solid 15 hours or so, minus the quick breaks, before either of them feels up for anything more than that.

Their medical leave is all about healing and as trite as it might sound, that’s what he does, what they both do. The five years, as good as they were, as healthy as they began, were damaging in all sorts of ways. It’s hard to open up without the pressing deadline of an operation or a decision looming over their heads and both he and Clint have trouble asking for what they want, but they work on it. It takes time for their relationship to be different, three-day-nap aside — their comfort zones are still falling asleep during a movie and platonically snuggling into bed. Phil forgets he’s allowed to kiss and Clint forgets that Phil’s solutions involve quiet sacrifice. Still, at the end of Clint’s two weeks of leave and Phil’s one week of leave and one week of vacation, things have been mostly arranged into good starting positions.

On the morning they’re both scheduled to return to work Phil feels all brand new, with baby soft skin and a patched up heart. He’s still vulnerable, but he’s getting there. Clint cooks them breakfast while Phil handles the coffee and they exchange sleepy good morning kisses and quiet notations about the day. At the end of the month, Clint is letting go of his lease and admitting that they’re just gonna live together anyway, so they might as well save money. It seems like an odd move when juxtaposed against their cautious actions on their relationship front, but they’ve learned to listen to what their hearts want a little more carefully and sometimes, what the heart wants, as long as you take the time to communicate it to your partner in an open and honest manner, is a very good idea.

 

END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Skin to Skin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1712321) by [Insidious Inkstains (sidneybelveire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidneybelveire/pseuds/Insidious%20Inkstains)




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